


Invisible Lines:

by Abraxas



Category: Justified
Genre: Drama, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-15
Updated: 2011-10-15
Packaged: 2017-10-24 15:39:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 21,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/265147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abraxas/pseuds/Abraxas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"You remember what Confucius said?"<br/>"Not off the top of my head."<br/>"Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves."<br/>"Maybe you should've thought of that before you 'embarked'."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Written with AndItsOuttaHere because, well, we share some thoughts on Dickie Bennett. If you haven't read our previous story, 'Stuck in the Middle' you might want to check it out before reading this.

**  
**

  
**  
_"I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread."_   
**   


**  
_G.K. Chesterton_   
**

 

 _Saturday Night_

"Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy."

The voice comes slow, thoughtful, as though they're in the middle of a conversation where this makes perfect sense.

"What?"

Boyd's eyes flick away from the window. "It's F. Scott Fitzgerald. Remind me to buy you some books for your next birthday - they might make a nice change for you from _Sports Illustrated_."

Raylan shifts position, levering himself up on one elbow to get a better vantage point. Splinters prickle through his jacket and shirt, the floor a mess of scraped dirt and weathered wood. "I buy that for the articles." He stares into the darkest part of the shadows, trying to make out movement.

"They still out there?" Boyd asks.

He snorts. "What do you think?"


	2. A Twitch Upon the Thread

_Saturday Morning_

Dim early morning light is pushing through the gap in the curtains when Raylan's voice wakes her. She can hear the rain pounding on the porch roof over his voice, calm and serious. "Ava, calm down and tell me again," he says into the phone. Winona rolls over and gives him a quizzical look. He holds up a finger. "When did he leave?" He motions for the pen and paper on the night-stand and Winona scrambles to get it. He makes a note. "Tell me again exactly what he said." The pen scratches across the paper again. "Ava? Hang on a minute." He covers the phone with his hand.

"Boyd's taken off after Dickie Bennett," he tells Winona. "Evidently, when he left he told Ava to call me if he wasn't back in twenty-four hours."

She reads the question in his eyes. "He's not and you want to go."

He nods.

She throws the covers back. "All right." He cocks his head and gazes at her for a moment, as if she's just told a joke and he's waiting for the punch line.

He uncovers the phone. "I'm on my way."

Sliding out of bed Winona pulls on her discarded jeans and shirt from the night before.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going with you. What does it look like I'm doing?"

"You're not going to Harlan with me. Why-"

"Ava shouldn't be alone," Winona says. "And if you think _I'm_ just going to sit here and wait for you to get back, well ... think again, Cowboy."

"I don't want you down there. It might get..."

"Exactly."

His jaw tightens. "And that's exactly why I don't want you there. Especially not in your condition."

Stooping to pull on her boots, she sits up, hair whipping across her shoulders. "Oh, you did not just say that."

"Winona-"

"I'll be in the car."

Any other time she keeps him a waiting a good half-hour - and the end result is always worth it - but _now_ she's up and dressed and heading for the door while he's still standing in his boxers.

"Winona," he tries again, soft, as though this will have an effect. It does slow her, momentarily.

"You're not getting a choice here," she says firmly. "Besides, I've got the keys." She jangles them at him triumphantly. Out of the door; then he hears the car door open and slam shut again. She always closes it too hard.

Raylan sighs and reaches for his clothes.

 

ooOoo

 

Spray from the road leaves a grimy film across the windshield and the repetitive scrape of the wipers is starting to grate on him. The traffic is light, still too early for anything heavier. Some weekend, he thinks to himself and thinks that when he does find Boyd he might just shoot him himself and be done with it.

Or maybe just torture him a little.

They have driven largely in silence and he can't quite identify the quality of it. Not strained, not entirely companionable - Winona is too absent for that. Each time he looks at her she isn't looking back at him.

Raylan glances sideways again at her. She's staring out of the rain-streaked glass at the passing landscape.

"What?" she says without looking at him. "If you have something to say, say it."

"I'm just tryin' to figure out this sudden change in attitude about me going to Harlan."

She turns to him now with a half-smile. "Maybe I'm just beginning to accept that you're going to do exactly what you want to do no matter what I say."

He considers that for a moment. "Not that I mind, but it seems like there might be more to it."

"Ava asked you to help." She shrugs. "Boyd might be in trouble."

"So an hour in an elevator and they're our best friends?"

"We could use some friends." She smiles.

"Ha," he scoffs. "Boyd's a criminal."

"Well, technically..." she says, giving him a knowing look.

He wrinkles his brow in a moment of confusion, then his lips twitch into a thin line. "Now that you mention it, you never did tell me what you would have done with that money."

Leaning back against the door she tugs at the seatbelt trying to find a position that doesn't press uncomfortably. "I was crazy, remember?" she says.

"That doesn't cut it." He shakes his head. "What ... would ... you ... have done with the money?" He draws it out. "You had to have some idea."

She fiddles with the seatbelt some more. "I thought about Costa Rica." She sighs.

"What?"

She closes her eyes, head resting against the seat back. "Costa Rica. I thought about just you and me getting away and never looking back. No job, no more Kentucky. Just us."

"Oh." He doesn't know what to say to that and they drive the next few miles in more silence. The four-lane highway narrows to two and begins to wind and twist in and out of the familiar hills and hollers, shrouded in the gray mist of early morning. The landscape is surreal and ghostly and as they approach Harlan he feels dread combined with a sense of belonging he just can't shake, no matter how hard he tries.

He reaches across and opens the glove compartment. "You remember how to use this?" He asks, handing her the Glock.

"Yes."

"Good. Take it. Ava has a sawed-off, but this is more your speed. Anything odd happens, anything at all, you take this and go to the cellar. You hear me?"

He expects resistance, but she just nods and lays a hand on the bulge of her belly.

"You sure you want to go to Ava's? I could drop you off at the Patrol station. Tom would make sure you got back to Lexington."

"No. Ava shouldn't be alone." One hand strays over and rests on his thigh. "I don't want to be alone either."

He covers her hand with his. "Okay, then. Here we are." He swings the car into a long drive and they pull up in front of the white-washed house.

The rain has eased but the air is still heavy with moisture and water drips off the steeply pitched gables. Winona examines the house and is surprised by both its size and its isolation. It feels like somewhere that's at the end of the world. They're barely out of the car when the front door opens and Ava is on the porch, the sawed-off in her hands, ready. Her body seems to sag when she recognizes them. When they reach the porch she's still holding the gun but it hangs loosely at her side. Her face is set hard, lines written harshly and fear behind her eyes.

"Raylan. Thank you." Her eyes move to Winona and widen as though she's only just seen her.

"I thought you could use the company," Winona says.

She nods and there's a tight fleeting smile. "You should come in." She stands aside to let them pass, her gaze moving up to the hills, searching for the missing.

"What happened?" The door barely closed behind them and Raylan is all business.

"I told you. Boyd went after Dickie."

"Dickie's been out three weeks - why now?"

Ava's hair is dragged back messily, her clothes crumpled, shadowed eyes. Fingers that move with a febrile restlessness, trying to curl around something that isn't there, the comforting habit that she's given up. She runs them through her hair, adding ridges.

"He went to ground, no-one knew where he was at."

"So who did Boyd send to find him?"

Her head shakes. "He didn't have to. Ain't no-one in Harlan or Bennett who don't know Boyd's after Dickie."

Raylan moistens his lips, presses them together. "Okay. Who told him, then?"

She is still then, her eyes watchful in a way he isn't accustomed to, not from her, and then her head shakes again, once, just slightly.

"What? You don't know? Or you ain't gonna tell me?"

"There was a phone-call," she says after a beat, "and then another one. It was two different people."

"So who were they?"

"Look, Boyd didn't want me in on this."

"Well, that was considerate of him."

"Raylan." Winona, and there's that note of reproach again, the one that she seems to reserve for very particular circumstances. He glances at her and she's sitting on Ava's couch and somehow manages to look as though she's at home there. He holds up his hands.

"Ava, he must have said something."

She rubs the back of her neck, exhaustion shaking through her. "He went to see Arlo."

A breath of laughter. "I should have known."

"He has plenty of reason to want Dickie dead himself."

"Oh, yeah, Arlo, and Boyd and- Y'know, I don't know why I bother."

"Then why did you come here?"

"I came because you asked me to."

"No, I just called you and that was not my idea. You didn't come all this way for me, Raylan." Head high, back straight, she is proud and fury blazes through her face. "I should never have called you, I should have just gone myself."

"Stop! Both of you." Winona pushes herself up, stands between them. "Ava, it's fine. Raylan is going to do whatever he can to help. Aren't you." Her eyes flash.

His jaw twists and he takes a breath down deep, blows it out. "Fine. I'll go talk to Arlo." To Winona: "You've got the gun?"

"In my purse." Winona nods, but doesn't meet his eyes.

"And you know what to do if there's any trouble."

"Go to the cellar. I know, Raylan."

"You too," he says to Ava. There's a tightening around her mouth, something that flashes across her face but then she nods. "All right." He fishes the keys out of his pocket. "I'll call when I find him ... but cells don't always work up here," he adds for Winona's benefit.

"So don't worry if you call and I don't answer. Give me your phone." He punches in a number. "That's Tom Bergen's number. Call him if you can't get me."

"Okay." She leans in, acutely aware of the other woman's presence, and gives him a quick kiss. He holds her gaze for a moment, holding her face in his memory. When he's almost through the door Ava's voice stops him.

"Raylan." He turns and she has her arms wrapped around herself. "Bring him home."

He nods vaguely and closes the door.

Silence pours through the house and for a while neither woman speaks. Winona clears her throat and Ava starts at the sound, head snapping around and she relaxes again when she sees her. One corner of Winona's mouth curls up in a half-smile.

"Still here."

"Sorry. I'm not usually like this." She bites the inside of her lower lip, frowns slightly. "You sure you want to be here? There's plenty of folks can take you back to Lexington."

Winona takes a moment. "I'll leave if you really want me to but I do think you could do with someone here. And, honestly, I don't much take to the idea of sitting around Raylan's motel room worrying on my own."

Ava's eyes widen again. "You're both still living there?"

"Well, we're supposed to be looking for a place but at the rate that's going we'll probably end up just shoving a crib at the foot of the bed and calling that the nursery."

Ava manages a full smile at that. "There've been a lot worse starts in life."

"I guess..." Winona's face creases. "But it's not the one I'd have chosen, y'know, in an ideal world."

They both smile. Ava runs her hands through her hair again and it's followed by a muttered exclamation; she shakes it loose, smoothes down the gold waves, pulls it back into a loose roll at the nape of her neck. "Can I get anything for you, Winona?"

It seems oddly formal, this sudden playing at hostess, but there's something familiar in it, a ritual that can be followed without much thought.

And it's a distraction, of a sort, if nothing else.

"I just realized, I haven't had any breakfast."

Ava is immediately indignant. "You haven't eaten? Raylan brought you all this way-" She looks outraged.

"He did offer, but I didn't much take to the look of the diners we passed."

"Mm, most of them along that route have been closed down at least twice each for health code violations."

Winona blinks. "Good to know. I am kinda hungry, though."

Perhaps there's a relief in having something to do. Ava smiles. "We can soon fix that."


	3. Unseen Hooks

He pulls into the drive and parks. The place has an even greater air of neglect and disrepair than usual. A lawnmower stands abandoned in the side yard, one strip of tall grass showing where either the mower or the person pushing it simply ran out of gas. The only spot that bears any sign of caretaking is the grave. There's an old whiskey bottle, with flowers not yet wilted by a day in the Harlan sun. The weeds have been trimmed away from the edges of dirt, blades of new grass already beginning to poke through the soil. He sighs, pushes the car door open and walks toward the mound of earth.

He stands there for a moment, hat in hand. He misses her. It isn't the raw angry grief he felt the last time he kept vigil here, but in some ways it's worse. He feels regret, for things said and unsaid, done and undone. Helen visits his dreams, a sardonic spirit wreathed in cigarette smoke and hard-bitten humor, and he wakes in a sweat, wondering about this world and the next and all the shit that happens in between.

Looking up, he sees the sun attempt to bore its way through the clouds. Likely in Lexington it's already a sunny morning. Here, it will be hours before the rays reach the earth. Still, the view is beautiful, as Winona noted; and somewhere in Harlan, he supposes, someone is happy. But there is no happiness here.

The hat goes back on his head, and he trudges up the steps to Arlo.

He rattles the door, knowing that Arlo has never taken to uninivited guests. And he prefers not to have his head blown off before he's got what he's come for.

There's a shuffling sound, a figure looming behind the wire screen that buckles and sags, one corner torn away from the framework.

Arlo pushes the door open and for a moment there is dissonance, white noise, a mis-recognition where Raylan can't reconcile the man he knows, remembers, with the one standing in front of him.

Arlo -his father, no matter what- was always sturdy, strong, proud in his way. This man-

This man is diminished. For the first time, he looks old.

Their eyes meet and the look holds and then Arlo says,

"You'd best come in."

Raylan follows slowly. The place is a mess, more even than before. Newspapers read and unread, dirty dishes, bits of broken glass litter the floor. There's a blanket haphazardly folded on the end of the couch, pillow stacked on top.

"You sleepin' down here now?"

"Not sleepin' all that much anyways. Seems a waste of time going upstairs." Arlo looks away, something in his eyes that evidently isn't for Raylan to see.

Raylan stands in the center of the storm and gazes at all of it, feeling its history pull at him like the undertow of an ocean current.

"I like what you've done with the place," he says, watching Arlo shuffle around with his dressing-gown hanging from his shoulders, the belt trailing along the floor.

"Ava comes round some days," Arlo tells him. "Don't see why she should - ain't none of her concern what happens to me. But she's a sweet thing." He eases himself into a chair and looks up at Raylan. "So."

"I came about Boyd." His face feels tight, something bubbling deep down that he's too afraid to think about, afraid of what might happen if he does think about it.

"Boyd?"

"Don't try acting innocent, Arlo, you wouldn't know how. Ava called me; I know Boyd's gone after Dickie Bennett."

Arlo's head tilts up, his eyes dark and flat and calculating. "Boyd's out doing what needs to be done. What you should be doing to that son-of-a-bitch, after what he did to Helen."

"Don't. Don't bring her into this." So close. He is so close. Arlo watches him, his lips curling.

"She is part of this; you expect me to cut her out of it? I lived with the woman day in and day out for nearly fifteen years. Fifteen years you weren't here - what gives you more right to her than anyone else?"

Raylan looks away and his eyes land on the photograph of Helen and his mother and himself that sits on the crowded sideboard. He remembers that day. And the walls close in and he closes his eyes and he misses her, them, both of them.

"Ava said Boyd came to see you," he says, and he keeps the years of separation and training and hardness and betrayal between them.

"He did." Arlo offers nothing more.

He's being baited and he knows it. Arlo wants violence. Craves it. Raylan takes a deep breath. _Use your words,_ he reminds himself. "What did he say?"

"Said he was goin' after Dickie. Said he knew where he was holed up."

Another breath. "And that was where?" Low, calm, no sign of the seething just beneath.

"He didn't say."

"Dammit, Arlo." It comes out more pleading than angry. "Boyd's not back. He's been gone since yesterday morning. Ava's worried sick."

That gets a momentary reaction. Something close to genuine worry slides across the old man's face. More worry than he's ever spent on his own son. "Come to think of it…" Arlo says. "He did say somethin' about you."

"And what was that?"

"Doesn't make no sense." Arlo shrugs. "Said it was too bad you didn't have one more jug of that 'shine Helen used to make hid off somewhere." His eyes flick up to Raylan's. "What's moonshine got to do with Dickie Bennett?"

"Not a thing I can think of," Raylan says. But he knows where Boyd is.

 

ooOoo

 

Ava eats mechanically, more something she has to do rather than wants to. She grips her knife and fork a little too hard, her knuckles showing white.

The food is good and there is plenty of it. She cooks like someone who is accustomed to feeding people and when they both are finished there is still far too much left over and Ava frowns at it as though she can't quite understand why it's there.

"I'll clean up," Winona offers and Ava waves a hand.

"Leave it. I'll do it later."

Watery sunshine struggles through the cloud and the rays afford the illusion of cheer, warming the muted tones of Ava's kitchen. The magnets on the fridge are bright, big floral heads, and Winona smiles at them. Everything in the house has a homely, well-worn feel but there is pride in it. Ava, she thinks, is the sort of woman who could turn a broken-down shack into a proper home. She thinks of herself as being house-proud but this is something different, something more than that. This is a homemaker.

She shifts on her chair, the wood squeaking and Ava looks at her.

"You'll be more comfortable in the parlor."

"Oh, I'm fine."

Ava gives her a look, quiet and steady and she's grateful to give into it. She pushes herself up from the table and they abandon the dishes and empty coffee cups. Ava picks up the shotgun that she left leaning against the wall - an ominous presence that Winona couldn't quite ignore throughout the meal - and her eyes flicker to the purse that Winona picks up, the bottom bulging from the weight of the gun inside. She looks at her consideringly.

"You can shoot?"

"I _was_ married to Raylan. What do you think?"

"I think you'd never shot a gun 'fore you met Raylan." She grins and Winona shakes off the outsider feeling again.

"He said I took to it pretty quickly."

There's a nod and a faint smile. "You ever shot anyone?"

Winona presses her lips together. "Well, no. But-"

"It ain't like target practice." She's serious then, her eyes shadowed. "It's actually pretty easy. That's the scary part."

She doesn't, she realizes, know Ava well enough to respond to that and she wonders what it's like to live with something like that, to be the person who could do something like that; and she wonders just how you get to that stage and hopes that she never has to find out.

The room Ava calls the parlor is cluttered and comfortable.

"It's a bit of a mess..." She bites her lip.

"You should see our charming motel."

And Ava smiles.

There are lighter patches on the walls, rectangles where pictures have been taken down. The ones that remain are mainly of Ava on her own or others, much older, of people Winona doesn't know. There are books everywhere and CDs stacked neatly by a stereo that looks fairly new and like it hasn't been there very long. The room is a negotiation, one life making space for another until an equilibrium is found.

Winona pulls a book off the top of one of the piles and can't help a breath of laughter.

Ava looks over and wrinkles her nose. "Oh, that. I started reading it but I gave up - I couldn't stand that girl!"

" _Persuasion_ is better," Winona says softly.

"That's what Boyd says."

"I remember."

Ava frowns. "What?"

Winona stares at the book and tries to think but her brain doesn't co-operate.

 

ooOoo

 

He drives with his hands tight on the wheel. He knows the way by heart, even though it's been twenty years since he's been in this part of the county. From the ruts and potholes, muddied by the morning rain, the roads haven't been repaved in nearly that long.

His mind wanders, unsettled by the vision of his father stuck in his mind. Arlo had always been a force: a force to avoid or run from as a boy, a force to confront as a young man, and maybe a bit of both since Raylan's return to Kentucky. The man he just left is indeed, as Boyd said that day in the elevator, adrift without an anchor. Raylan considers for a moment the possibility that Arlo really loved Helen; that Arlo was capable of love at all.

He shakes his head, partly in denial, partly to clear his brain of unwelcome introspection. Now, though, the photograph rises in his memory. He rarely thinks of his mother, almost never misses her; she was broken and absent in spirit long before she passed. Today, though, after standing in that house empty of any sign of care or affection, he feels her loss as keenly as Helen's.

He rounds a curve and a glint of silver catches his eye. Slowing, he rolls down the window and peers into the woods that line the side of the road. There's a dirt path, just wide enough for a vehicle and off to the side is Boyd's truck. There's no sign of the man. He eases the car into the curve under a bank of trees and approaches the truck, eyes busy and cautious and his hand hovering over the gun at his hip.

The truck is relatively clean, a tarpaulin folded on the flat-bed. The passenger-side window is halfway open and he circles the truck until he reaches it, still looks around and then peers through the window. He doesn't expect a message with an arrow pointing in the direction that Boyd has taken but he does think that there might be something. There are two books on the seat and he slides an arm through the opening, waiting for the alarm. It doesn't sound. He can't reach them, pulls back his arm, tries the door and it opens. He swears under his breath.

The books are a volume of John Donne and a copy of _The Language of Flowers_. Nothing hidden between their pages. He stares at the worn volumes for a moment and then reminds himself that he is, after all, chasing after a mad man. He goes back to his car.

Raylan considers his options and decides it best to park elsewhere. Not a good idea to have both vehicles in the same place. He drives about half-a-mile to a small clearing and parks, making his way back through the woods to Boyd's truck.

 

ooOoo

 

After Winona finishes the story there is a long silence that stretches her nerves to breaking point. And when Ava finally speaks, she says,

'Huh. So that's what happened."

For a moment she thinks it's possible that Ava hasn't actually heard anything that she's said.

"What?"

"Well," Ava leans back on the sofa, "when Boyd got back from Kuwait he didn't come back to Harlan right off. Didn't say where he'd been, but, well, obviously, he had to have been somewhere. Wasn't all that long before I got married." Her head tilts, thoughtful. "We didn't think he'd be there at all, for the wedding, I mean, but then he just showed up one morning like nothing had happened. He gave me a bunch of primroses and wished me good luck."

"He's loved you a long time," Winona says and there is no question in her tone.

Ava looks at her, looks away. "Yes. It didn't always seem that way at the time." There is silence and both women, perhaps, think about time and the alterations it brings to what is and what has been. Ava laughs suddenly and Winona looks up at her. "Sorry, I just keep thinking... Well, it is kinda funny: both of us having had both of them."

"I'm glad you think so." She shifts on the sofa, trying to ignore the insistent fluttering just below her ribcage.

"It is funny!"

One corner of Winona's mouth curls and Ava grins at her triumphantly. "Damn, you two kept that quiet. So, in the elevator..."

She nods. "First time I'd seen him in nearly twenty years. And then afterwards I realized I'd heard the name when I was typing those transcripts but I just didn't put it together." She blows out a breath and Ava still looks amused. "So... This is okay?"

Shoulders rise and drop. "It was a long time ago. And given my history with Raylan, I don't think anyone's got the right to start pointing fingers." She pauses. "Even so, I'm guessing Raylan doesn't know about this?"

"No." Her fingers link together. "And please don't tell him. I mean- Yeah, you're right, it was a long time ago but I don't think Raylan would be as ... understanding ... about this as you. He gets ... _weird_ doesn't cover it ... over Harlan and I don't know what it is with him and Boyd but it's something. What were they? Rivals? Best friends?"

Ava is silent; one hand rises in the air, fingers questioning, then falls. "They dug coal together."

"What does that mean?"

"Honestly, Winona, when it comes right down to it I don't know. Everything, to them anyhow." She shrugs again.

Raylan hadn't come to Harlan for Ava, she had been right about that. And she knows, is certain, that he would swear with his last breath that he hadn't come for Boyd. And while she's being honest about all of it, she isn't entirely sure why she came. It was the right thing, for some reason.

A spear of fire races up her spine and she sits forward with a grunt, pushes up, hands pressed at the small of her back and stretches against the pain. She winces. "I've been sitting too long," she tells Ava. "My back is killing me, and the baby's restless. He's kicking like crazy." She walks back and forth, rubbing her stomach in slow circles. "I don't suppose Raylan would approve of us taking a short walk around the yard? Sometimes if I move around he settles down."

"Raylan ain't here," Ava says. "Seems safe enough." Still, she picks up the sawed-off and takes it with her as they descend the steps. "I should check the garden anyway. And I think I forgot to get the mail yesterday."

They walk, the rain-soaked grass dampening their shoes. The sun is out in full now, but a heavy haze still hangs over the hills in the distance and in spots here and there in the yard there's a mist that can't quite be called fog. Winona thinks it's like being inside of one of those snow globes she loved as a girl, only instead of snow, it's just vapour glistening like diamonds that dissolve into nothing when you touch them.

"So..." Ava's voice startles her out of her daydream. "You still have kin in Kentucky?"

Winona hesitates; it's a question more out of politeness, she thinks; but then Ava's eyes are focused and it isn't the well-mannered disinterest of a stranger. "My mother passed a few years ago. Cancer."

"I'm sorry," Ava says, quiet. "You got a daddy?"

"Yes." Winona nods. "He's had a couple of heart attacks, but he's doing okay now. He lives over near Louisville. I don't see much of him."

"So ... not much in the way of grandparents for this one, what with how things are between Raylan and Arlo."

"It doesn't look like it, no."

"I meant what I said about Helen. She would have liked you," Ava notes. Then she smiles. "You stand up to Raylan."

Winona purses her lips thoughtfully, shoving her hands into the pockets of her sweater. "He'd say I'm _argumentative_."

"He would." Ava laughs. "I'm surprised he let you come here. He's got this protective thing."

"Oh, you noticed." Winona smirks.

"I'd imagine that's at its worst with you right now, considering."

Winona stops and turns to the other woman. "You know what he actually said to me this morning?" Ava shakes her head and Winona continues. "Said I shouldn't come in _my condition._ "

"Oh. Gosh." Ava's eyes crinkle with amusement. "Did you smack him?"

"I should've."

They come to a ridge at the back of the house and the view here is even more spectacular than the one in front. Winona wonders if you'd ever get used to seeing it every day.

"It's beautiful," she murmurs after a moment. "I can see why Lexington didn't work for you."

"The landscape wasn't really the problem." Ava turns her face up to the sun, taking in its warmth. Her eyes fix beyond the line of trees that border the property, are higher than the glisten of water feeding down to the nearby creek. She looks up at the peaks that crest against the mantle of cloud. "Boyd loves those hills. He can spend days up there at a stretch. He talks about them sometimes like they're people - their personalities, the way they work. I do love it here, but he ... he feels it, the creeks and the hollers. Right down to the bone. Sometimes I wish I could." She takes in a long breath then lets it go. "I should check the mail."

Winona follows her down to an indeterminate border that marks the end of her property and the small box mounted on its pole with the red lever. Ava pulls it open, one hand scrabbling inside. She frowns.

"What is it?" She feels the weight of the gun in her purse and her body tensing. Ava pulls out her hand, opens it and they both stare at the petals, translucent and delicate, lying in her palm. Their colors are muted but their beauty has still been captured: primroses and blue violets, pressed to the thinness of paper, embodying their message to her, not having it written upon them.

"That man..." Her face twists, a pain that tears through and contorts and buckles her. "When he comes back I'll kill him, I swear to God." Eyes glitter and she blinks rapidly and turns away and Winona tries to pretend that she cannot see it. She stares at the red lever on the mailbox. And when Ava has scrubbed at her face and put the precious handful of offerings into her jacket pocket and turned back, Winona asks,

"When did you last get any sleep?"

"Night before last." A pause. "Full night, probably a few nights before that."

"You should try to rest."

Ava shakes her head.

They stand for a while and argue the point: Winona is the one with the small human growing inside of her; Ava is the one who hasn't slept for forty-eight hours and is running on caffeine and fear. They both refuse the use of Ava's bed and face each other in the weak sunshine, then head inside when splashes of rain start to lick the already saturated earth. In the end they reach a compromise: Ava fetches blankets from upstairs and they both curl up on the sofa and over-stuffed chairs in the parlor.

There's a low side-table beside Ava's chair, and before she pulls her blanket over herself, she arranges carefully the pressed flowers across its surface.


	4. Dig Two Graves

He walks with slow deliberation - rarely walks any other way, but this time more from intent - for the best part of an hour, eyes roaming the muddy tracks that score the woodland floor. Now and then he stops and throws back his head and listens and sometimes he swears the thing rustling in the undergrowth is bigger, a lot bigger, than a possum or a racoon and he has the unsettling prickle between his shoulder-blades, the feeling that unseen eyes are on him and his hand rests on his hip, fastening and unfastening the holster, fingers brushing the butt of his gun.

He grew up with the woods but never felt all that much at home in them. Too many places for people to hide and while he can appreciate the necessity for and the tactical advantage of that in certain situations, he still always prefers things out in the open.

A twig cracks, breaking under something heavier than a wild animal and his body crouches automatically and this time his hand does go for his gun and his finger on the trigger is a reflex action, eyes looking for the target and he's ready for the shot.

"Raylan."

His finger twitches before he truly recognizes the voice and the tension in his muscles eases. Or, at least, his hand lowers a little.

"Boyd?" Cautious.

"Never been so glad to see a hat." Boyd moves out onto the track, curiously silent, a hunter's tread. "So, Ava called."

"She did. At dawn."

Boyd's head lifts, tilts back slightly and his gaze goes out somewhere beyond Raylan's head. "My apologies; I had not expected her to interpret twenty-four quite so literally." His gaze comes back. "Is she all right?"

"She's okay."

There's a grimace. "She's pretty mad, huh?"

"Oh, only hugely."

He looks Boyd over and it's both strange and familiar - he's seen him like this, almost, before, only then it was coal-dust instead of mud and his eyes still glittered behind their deep weariness.

"You look like you slept under a pile of leaves."

"Well now, it's funny you should say that seeing as that is more or less what I did do; well observed, Raylan - is that what they teach you in Marshal school?" He leans on the rifle like it's the only thing keeping him upright, takes a step and a grunt explodes through his lips, beads of sweat on his forehead. His skin is waxen under the layer of dirt.

"Where are you hurt?" Practicalities not concern. Never that.

"Ankle," Boyd says shortly, teeth clenched.

"How bad?"

"It'll mend."

"What happened?"

"Dickie decided to start the party a little earlier than I had planned." Boyd's eyes move, quick but calm. "Him and his boys are still crawling all over these hills."

Raylan presses his lips together, teeth gritting so hard his jaw aches with it and instead of all the things he wants to say, or yell, all the things that will rend the air and the ties to the past he asks,

"Can you walk at all?" His eyes scan the landscape estimating the distance back to his car. Boyd leans against an oak, breathing hard. He braces himself with one hand, using the rifle as a cane, and takes a tentative step. His face twists in pain, but the leg holds.

"How far you plannin' on hikin'?"

"Down the ridge ... maybe half a mile. Once we get past the trees it flattens out and the car's not far. Think you can make it?"

"As long as we're not racin' and they don't come back around."

Raylan falls into place on one side, supporting Boyd with a hand on his arm as they begin to move, using the trees for cover. "How'd Dickie get the drop on you anyway?" he asks, annoyed.

"I'd imagine the same way he got the drop on you not so long ago." Boyd grunts and leans heavily on the rifle. "I was momentarily distracted."

They move out of the cover of the trees and Raylan's gaze slides left to right and back again searching for any signs that they've been followed. "Can you move any faster? We're going to be in the open now, until we get to the car."

"Don't look like _that_ car's gonna do us much good," Boyd says, pointing at the flattened tires. " 'Less you've got a trunkful of spares."

"Shit!" He grabs Boyd's arm roughly and pulls the other man back into the brush at the edge of the woods. Crouching down, he feels through the leaves and dead grass on the ground and pulls up a branch. He snaps it in half across his knee. "We gotta splint that leg, see if we can get you movin' any better. Sit down."

Boyd sits and gingerly stretches the leg out in front of him and Raylan lays half the branch on each side. "We're gonna need somethin' to tie that with."

"I don't suppose we got any rope?" Raylan asks.

Boyd shakes his head. "Dropped my pack with all my stuff before you found me."

"You wearin' a belt?"

Boyd lifts his jacket and undoes the buckle, sliding the worn leather through the loops. Raylan wraps the belt around the make-shift splint several times and pulls it tight. "That'll have to do. Try standin' on it."

Boyd eases himself up, grasping hard the hand that Raylan holds out to him. He puts his full weight on his bad leg, straightens, and his body still stiffens and his face is white but he nods and says, "I can make it."

"Your truck ain't that far off."

"I realized that," Boyd says as they start moving again and he walks faster than before but still limping badly. "I was headed that way when I saw you."

"Let's hope Dickie hasn't got to it first."

He's alert and his senses tingle with the same uneasiness as before but even with that when the gunfire starts it's still a shock. Bullets hit the ground at their feet and Raylan's gun is in his hand, lets off two shots in the direction he thinks they came from and his eyes rake the undergrowth and the trees and find nothing.

How long, he wonders, how long were they watched, stalked, hunted through the woods until Dickie decided to start playing?

More bullets and they start moving fast, down the track and he's aware of Boyd dropping further back behind him, turns and makes a grab for him, feels something like a massive punch land at the top of his right arm and he almost drops his gun. He stumbles and feels a hand grab at him, Boyd pulling him along, still using the rifle as a crutch but running in a way that can do him no good.

Gunfire from ahead, Raylan realizes, cutting off the path to the truck, to the road, to safety, to Ava's house and Winona and the women who are waiting for them.

They turn off the track, head deeper into the woods, following a path long since overgrown but one that he remembers even now, one that he could have got to blindfolded back in the day.

There are still shots in the air but muffled now, further back and ahead is the clearing and the hut. Still standing and he's almost surprised that it's still standing but it's always surprising what lasts in Harlan.

Holes in the roof and the door hanging open on sagging hinges. They run to it like it's home.

Through the door, dragging it shut behind them and they both hit the floor, chewing dust. The air is stale, laden with disturbed dirt but they drag it in, tasting its musty bitterness. Boyd rolls over onto his back, his face a sickly waxen color and clammy with sweat. Raylan feels the tear in his chest and thinks that he's getting too old for this.

"Shit," he says, gasps. "Boyd, what the hell did you go starting this for?"

"His retribution was coming." His voice shakes between breaths and his injured leg lies at an awkward angle. "What he did to Ava... I could not abide it."

"So you decided to play hero. Which you're shit at, by the way."

"You remember what Confucius said?"

"Not off the top of my head."

Boyd's lips pull back in a smile, a rictus grin. "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves."

Raylan rolls his eyes. "Maybe you should've thought of that before you 'embarked'."

He scrambles across the floor, peering out of the window. All is still and quiet, for the moment, but the shadows of late afternoon are already starting to gather and the play of light through the trees is deceptive. Boyd pulls himself after him.

"You've been hit," Boyd tells him.

"It's fine." He tries to shrug and swears instead.

"Let me take a look."

Raylan glares at him. "It's just a scratch."

"That's as may be but if you get dirt in it you could end up with an arm off and I don't think you'd like that - especially as it's your shooting arm."

He allows Boyd to help him peel off his jacket and the blood is everywhere. It is a flesh wound, a gash across his upper arm, vicious and oozing. The skin all around is stained red and a metallic tang joins the dusty air. The torn sleeve of his shirt is ripped away in its entirety and Boyd binds it tight around the wound, staunching the blood. It's a dull throb that he's aware of every second and as if in sympathy the healed bullet-hole in his side answers with its own deep ache.

They sit either side of a window, backs against the wall. Boyd keeps his injured leg out flat, the other bent at the knee with the rifle resting against it.

"How many guys has Dickie got with him?"

"Three."

Raylan squints at him. "You sure?"

"I spent most of yesterday tracking them; I'm sure, Raylan."

"You know who they are?"

A spasm of pain crosses Boyd's face and he sits forward, gripping his ankle, sits back again when it passes. He breath comes short and hard. "One of 'em's Nate Harris. I don't know the others."

"Nate Harris..." Raylan repeats the name, frowning.

"He was good enough to let me know Dickie's whereabouts."

"Yeah, well, he seems real trustworthy- Hang on, Nate Harris? Isn't he Dickie's cousin?"

Eyes closed, Boyd nods. "He is."

Silence and then his voice rises. "And you still came up here?"

The eyes slide open. "I was aware that his intentions might be duplicitous."

"Oh, were you? So you decided to invite me along as back-up? Thanks a lot."

"I am mighty grateful you elected to respond to Ava's call."

Raylan turns sharply, sucking in a breath and clutching his arm; the throb becomes a burn and can feel the blood still oozing. "I don't want your gratitude. I don't want anything from you, nor anyone else in Harlan, neither."

He sits back and breathes through his teeth, trying to find a way of holding himself that doesn't hurt.

"Who was the other person?" he asks after a while.

"What other person?"

"Ava said you got two calls."

Boyd grins at him and he thinks about extracting those big white teeth slowly, one by one, and without anaesthetic. But his face has regained something of its normal color, so far as Raylan can tell, and he looks less like he'll pass out at any second. "Now, Raylan, surely you do not propose that I should compromise my sources of information."

Raylan rests the back of his head against the wall and closes his own eyes for a moment. "You are unbelievable."

Any paint that had been on the walls has long since flaked off, adding to the gritty powder that covers the floorboards. Old tarpaulins, broken boxes, detritus that looks as though it hasn't been disturbed for as long as the roads in Harlan haven't been repaved.

"Don't think this place gets as many visitors as back in the old days," Boyd comments and Raylan rolls his eyes, a spear of irritation that even his own thoughts don't appear to be private. But he shakes it off and he even smiles to himself.

"Came up here once with Ginny Faraday."

"Everybody came here with Ginny Faraday." Boyd grins.

"That's true," Raylan admits.

"She was just shy of pretty but she made up for it in enthusiasm."

Raylan chokes back a laugh. "That's one way of puttin' it." He glances around the dim interior. "Brought Trisha Jenkins here on prom night, too."

"Trisha? Boyd looks at him quizzically. "You dated Trisha?"

"My whole junior year." He gives Boyd a raised eyebrow. "Why?"

Boyd laughs. "I never realized our similar tastes in the fairer sex went quite so far back."

"You and Trisha?" Raylan scoffs. "She don't seem like your type, even back then."

"And why's that?"

"Well, she was sweet, but about as smart as that log over there. Seems like you appreciate a woman with more intelligence."

"Seems like you do, too, from recent examples. Why'd _you_ date her?"

"Like I said, she was sweet."

"And built like a brick shithouse, as my daddy would've said."

"Well, there was that."

A pause.

"I wonder where that comes from."

"What?"

"That saying - a brick shithouse. It seems a little counterintuitive when applied to a woman of some appeal."

"Counterintuitive?"

"Yes. I like that word, counterintuitive; it means-"

"I know what it means."

Boyd sits forward again, adjusting the makeshift splint. "Maybe it was meant to be ironic."

"By Bo?"

His fingers still over the belt. "My daddy was a very literal man. He didn't really go in for things like irony. Not intentionally, anyway."

Gunfire rips through the space, splintering wood and filling the air with it harsh, deafening rattle. When it stops Raylan scrambles to the opposite window, gun ready in his hand. There's movement in the trees but nothing he can really target; and there isn't enough ammunition for blind firing. He glances across and Boyd has the rifle raised, his hands steady.

The voice comes from outside: Dickie, all sing-song vowels and crowing triumph.

"Well, God _damn_ it but if it ain't Federal Marshal Raylan Givens in the house! Now we got ourselves a real party."

Laughter, whooping, and then another bullet bites into the wood.

Raylan raises his head cautiously, peers out. "He's got more guys and more guns - why doesn't he just come in here?"

"Because he's enjoying it too much."


	5. Choices

When Winona wakes the room is cloaked in shades of evening. She lies still, blinking, disoriented, trying to remember where she is and why she's there.

Ava has gone, the blanket in a heap on the chair. Winona sits up, working the kinks in her neck out with her fingers. The house is unnervingly quiet and when she holds her breath for a moment, listening, the silence is thick, settled. She lets it out and her heart seems to be beating a little too hard. The porch light, she notices finally, the porch light is on.

The screen door whines when she pushes it open; the fine lines of Ava's profile are picked out and then lost as the blonde turns her head and smiles up her.

"Hey. You okay?"

"I'm fine. A little stiff - don't think I've slept on a sofa since college."

"I got coffee," Ava says, holding up her hands that are linked around a mug, "fresh, if you'd like some."

She feels sluggish, her eyes heavy and gritty beneath the lids. "Yeah, I think I will."

"No, sit, I'll get it." Ava unfolds herself from the wicker porch seat. "Cream? Sugar?"

"Uh, a little of each. No bourbon, though," she adds and it earns her a smile.

"There ain't a drop in the whole house - can you believe that? I quit smoking, stopped drinking, I've been living clean." She sighs. "Sure could do with a slug round about now, though." She goes into the house.

The sawed-off leans against the railing, glinting dully in the failing light, within easy reach of Ava's seat.

Rain still threatens in the clouds that hang low over the mountains. But it's a nice view, Winona thinks again, and she imagines long summer days of glorious sunshine and cool creeks under the mountain shade. She closes her eyes for a moment, breathes in the scent of the flowers from the pot-plants and the warmth behind them coming in on the breeze. She starts slightly when the door whines.

"Thanks." She takes the mug from Ava and they sit together on the long seat.

The coffee is strong and very hot and her eyes water against it. She blinks rapidly, then studies Ava who's staring into the rising steam from her own refreshed mug.

"Did you get any sleep at all?"

"A little." Winona looks at her, eyebrows raised and Ava's shoulders sink. "No, not really. It's funny... The whole time I was married Bowman was never away longer than two or three nights at a stretch - when they'd go up-country hunting. I never minded it. It was nice, y'know, having the place to myself, being able to eat toast for every meal if I wanted... Then after he died I got used to being on my own and sleeping alone and I was okay with it. I could live like that." She pushes a lock of hair behind her ear. "And then when Boyd moved in I got used to that, someone else being in the house, and then sharing a bed together and- The thing is, anytime he's away I can't sleep." She looks at Winona. "I know, it's real pathetic, right?"

Winona's lips push out, her eyebrows going up again, thoughtful. Elbow on the back of the seat, she keeps her cheek propped against the heel of her hand. "I don't know. I've had plenty of sleepless nights over Raylan Givens."

Ava's lips curl upward slightly. "And not over, uh..."

"Gary? Well, some... But only after we split and for really different reasons." Money, Gary being a jerk, money...

"Why'd you leave Raylan?" Ava pulls one leg up, tucking her foot under. "I mean, I don't want to pry but it don't seem to me like love was the problem."

Winona considers the other woman for a moment. "Remember when I met you in the courthouse that day and gave you that little warning speech about being involved with a LEO?"

"Um hum." Ava nods.

"That's not the reason."

Ava snorts a laugh and Winona grins back at her.

"It's only part of it. The other part, well, that's harder to put to words." She shifts, trying to get comfortable on the overstuffed cushions. "There's a darkness to Raylan. I used to think it came from this place ... from Harlan; but maybe it's just growing up the way he did with Arlo and it wouldn't have mattered where."

Ava is quiet, as if she's thinking carefully about what she's going to say. "Boyd's daddy wasn't like Arlo, but in some ways you might say he was worse. Of course, Boyd had a brother to take some of Bo's heat."

"And Raylan didn't." Winona nods. A pause, then: "Do you have brothers or sisters, Ava?"

She shrugs. "None that I know of. But my daddy left when I was three, so who knows? Maybe there's one or two out there. How about you?"

"No." Winona shakes her head. "My mother ... wasn't well."

"I'm sorry." Ava says, and Winona can tell she means it. Which is probably why she continues.

"That's not really true. She probably could have been well if she hadn't lived inside a bottle." She sighs. It's been so long since she's told the truth, or had a friend to tell it to.

Ava's eyes are sympathetic. "They say that's a disease, too."

"I guess they do."

"So" -Ava settles further into her corner of the seat- "what made you take up with Raylan again? I mean, I remember you saying he was hard to stay mad at, but it's a long way from not mad to ..." She looks pointedly at the swell half-hidden by the loose folds of Winona's sweater.

Winona laughs. "Yes, I suppose it is." A shrug. "I love him. I'd like to think we've changed enough to make it work this time." She pauses. "Or maybe now I know that there isn't any such thing as a perfect life, or even a better one. It's just what you make of it."

"There is that," Ava comments softly.

Winona winces and sits up, stretching one leg out in front of her. "Ow."

"You okay?"

"Just a leg cramp." She rubs her belly. "He sits on a nerve sometimes, or that's what the doctor says."

"He?" Ava smiles slightly. "You've been saying that a lot - did you find out after all?"

"We can't call the baby 'it'." She laughs. "I try to alternate, but usually I just end up saying 'he'."

"Do you want a boy?"

Winona considers the question thoughtfully. "I'm not sure I can handle _two_ Givens boys."

Ava laughs. "That might be a handful."

"Do you not want kids?"

Ava looks down at her mug again. "I would. Don't know if I can have any, now."

Winona winces, remembers the look on the other woman's face in the elevator. "God, Ava, I'm sorry. I-"

She shakes her head. "It's fine. I was pregnant. More than once but I always miscarried. Bowman never let up for anything."

Winona takes more of her coffee, rests the mug back on her knee, feels its heat seeping through her jeans. "Okay, a question for you and I am prying: why _didn't_ you leave your husband?"

"I did. A few times. Once it was even for a couple of months. And then I went back because I believed him when he said it would change. Or I wanted to believe him. Of course, it never did, just always got worse. The last time I left, when he found me, I was too scared not to go back with him. Now that really was darkness."

"And Boyd's the light?" Winona asks, sceptical.

Ava lets out a bite of laughter. "Hardly that. But there's different kinds of dark." She puts her mug down on the floor, sits back. "Darkness in me, too - took me long enough to figure that out, mind. Spent a lot of time running away from it or pretending it wasn't there but now ... now, I can take it. I can live with it." Silence for a while and they both stare into the indeterminate shadows circling the porch. Ava's head rests against the back of the seat. "I haven't talked about Bowman in a long time."

Winona rouses herself. "Don't you and Boyd talk about him?"

Shoulders rise and fall. "His name comes up sometimes but that's about as far as it goes. It's like he's just someone we used to know."

She wonders if that's how Boyd thinks of his late brother. She looks at Ava curiously. "Were you and he- I mean, before your husband...?"

"God, no!" Ava looks horrified at the idea. And then color stains the pallor of her cheeks. "I mean, Boyd always- I didn't-" She takes in a breath and it comes out again in a shaky stream. The fingers of one hand drum against her thigh. "I've known Boyd Crowder most of my life but I don't think I really _knew_ him until he moved in. It used to scare me, kinda. All of his ... _intensity_. I mean, Boyd is a lot to take. And I wasn't ready for any of that - something else I used to run away from, I guess. But I'm ready now."

Winona nods and there is silence again. Ava shifts, the wicker creaking under her.

"You know when you said two Givens boys would be too much? Two Crowder boys..." She lets it hang for a moment then shakes her head, wide-eyed.

"Maybe a girl," Winona suggests.

"A girl..." Ava's face lights up. "I think I'd like that." And she is lost, then, her eyes far beyond the misty blur of the hills.

And Winona can almost see it, too: a little blonde girl with her mama's devastating smile and her daddy's quiet, intense eyes.

And that, she thinks, her hand protective over her stomach, is even more terrifying.

 

ooOoo

 

"Fitzgerald... Was he the one with the crazy wife?"

A long sigh follows this. "Yes, Raylan," Boyd answers, with the same pained tone in his voice that their high-school English teacher used to use, "he was the one with the crazy wife."

"Zelda," Raylan says, "that was her name, wasn't it?"

Boyd glances at him, incredulous. "You are not completely ignorant of matters outside of law enforcement after all." He nods. "Good to know."

He thinks about the books in Boyd's truck and the way that he's the only person Raylan has ever known who takes genuine pleasure in the sound of a word, in the meaning of it.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Don't see how I can stop you," Boyd says. "Of course, doesn't follow that I'll answer."

"Understood." A pause. "Why didn't you ever get out of Harlan?"

"I did once, Raylan, as I'm sure you know well enough, having read my file."

"I didn't mean that. Just pack up and go. You had the smarts for it."

Another pause and when Raylan glances across at Boyd he hasn't moved, still keeping watch out of the window but then he says, "I never had a Helen."

Raylan's eyebrows go up. "That's your excuse?"

Boyd's head turns and for a moment their gazes meet and hold and then break again. "I'm not making any excuses, Raylan, I take responsibility for everything that I have done. The point I am making is that I made my choices based on a limited set of options."

"And what about now?"

"Are you proposing I should abandon Ava?"

"Both of you get out," Raylan says, slow and clear.

A breath of laughter. "What makes you think we want to leave?"

Raylan shakes his head.

"I do not expect you to understand what it is I am trying to achieve here."

"Bringing chaos and destruction to Harlan? No, I understand that pretty good."

"You have your justice, Raylan Givens, and I have mine."

"Justice?" He almost stumbles over the word. "No, no, no, what we do is nothing alike. I'm a lawman, you're a criminal - you do get that distinction?"

"Can you tell me in all honesty that your own notion of justice is always in line with the laws that you uphold?"

"I ain't never been to jail," Raylan answers, a defensive tone that he can't keep out of his voice.

Boyd makes a sound in the back of his throat, like he's pleased about something. There's silence for a time and then Boyd starts talking again, his voice soft. "I did think of staying out of Harlan once. A long time ago. Even played at it for a time."

"Let me guess: there was a girl involved."

Boyd grins. "There's always a girl. But I couldn't see any way of making any of it work."

"What happened to the girl?"

"My understanding is that she left Kentucky."

Somewhere outside a stick breaks under a heavy foot and Raylan sees a shadow slide across the undergrowth. He tenses, waiting, but there is nothing. He feels the beads of sweat roll down his back and the angry throb in his arm. From the other side of the room he hears a long breath released.

"What?"

"I was just thinking."

"Well, that's what you're good at."

"I was thinking about women." Boyd shifts position, settles again. "I dare say we're both thinking of a woman, even if it isn't the same one. How is Winona?"

Raylan's eyes narrow. "Why?"

"The last time our paths crossed she was very clearly carrying what I assume is your child; I was merely enquiring as to the state of her well-being. It's politeness, Raylan."

A beat.

"She's fine." He watches Boyd. "She's with Ava."

Boyd's head turns, sharp. "What?"

"I said, she's with Ava."

Another beat.

"Are you sure that's wise?"

He blows out a breath. "Wise? You're asking me about wise?" There is silence and then: "I was against it. Winona insisted on coming."

Boyd's head turns slightly, his face more than in profile but still swallowed in shadow. "Oh?"

"I couldn't talk her out of it. Apparently she's decided that we're all friends." He studies what he can see of Boyd's face and thinks that even if he could see more it probably wouldn't help. Helen had taught him how to spot a lie but she had never set aside special lessons on how to read Boyd Crowder.

"She's a fine woman."

"Yes, she is."

More silence. Everything outside of their hut is still.

"So, how are you taking it?"

"Well, I'd prefer if she was back in Lexington-"

"I meant" -Boyd looks at him fully, and his face is colored by a mix of exasperation and disbelief. And he has some nerve, Raylan thinks- "how are you taking your impending fatherhood?"

"Oh."

"It's a mighty big responsibility."

"Which is why, I guess, you've never taken it on." He squints across at Boyd. "Or have you? Or don't you know?"

One corner of Boyd's mouth turns up. "No, Raylan, I have no children. If I did I would care for their interests most solicitously."

"Lucky kids."

They each stare out of their windows and silence and darkness makes some things safe.

"It scares the shit out of me," Raylan says and the words hang there, his testimony written in dust and splintering wood. Boyd says nothing, as though Raylan hasn't spoken at all and he's glad - grateful - for that. Arlo hadn't set the bar for fatherhood very high, so there is, at the very least, that consolation. Such as it is.

Boyd stirs, stretching out his injured leg, still keeping his gaze fixed on the shadows beyond the tree-line. "I do have one piece of advice."

Raylan rolls his eyes, rests his head against the wall. "Go on." Flat.

"If it's a boy, don't name him Sue."

There's a moment, and then Raylan laughs.

 

ooOoo

 

Sometime around midnight or maybe later, Winona finds herself telling Ava about the money.

She doesn't tell it in quite the same way she had told Raylan; not that she had lied to him but she had tried to make it sound less bad than it had been. She hadn't told him that if it had not have been for the very real (or just plain actual) chance that she'd be found out or because of the position she had put him in, she would have kept it. All of it. And she would not have cared about it at all.

She sits at the kitchen table while Ava clears and washes the dishes and she tells her all of it and when she's done Ava pulls off her rubber gloves and turns and leans against the counter and sighs and says,

"It's a damn shame you couldn't keep any of that money." Her face is wistful, like she's already spending the ill-gotten gains in her head.

"That's another thing I can't tell Raylan - that I kind of agree with you."

"Kind of?"

She winces. "That I completely agree."

Ava takes the seat opposite her. "It's a waste keeping it there, anyhow."

"You know what?"

Ava tilts her head. "What?"

"You're easy to talk to."

There's a smile, part pleased and part rueful. "Let's just say that I've been in a situation not entirely different from yours."

"Oh?"

Silence then, and Ava plays with the salt cellar she keeps on the table. Winona watches her for a while, settles back in her chair. "I've just confessed to what I'm pretty sure is a felony. As far as I'm concerned, what's said in Harlan stays in Harlan."

Ava looks up and smiles at her, and then there is a story about a mortgage that needs to be paid and a mine and some bad people and guns and a bomb and a life that was saved and money that saved her and a man who would do anything for the woman he cares for.

"We sure know how to pick them," Winona says.

"And ain't that a fact."

Winona settles in her chair, resting her feet on the the crossbar running between the table legs. "Even on the way down here Raylan was asking me why I took it and I told him I was thinking about him and me and running away from everything and that isn't a lie but at the time all I thought about was that it was so much money and nobody wanted it. Fact is, I still don't see what's so bad about it. I mean, I know it was stupid and probably morally it was wrong, but... In all honesty, if no-one had ever known, I'd be fine with it."

"Probably most folks would," Ava says, "when you come down to it."

"Raylan's so... Sure about things. I admire that, I do. It's just that sometimes I think that's a hard way to live. Makes him good at what he does, though - and now he's got an ex who's practically an outlaw."

Ava smiles slightly. "I think that's what they call ironic."

"You mean like rain on your wedding day?"

"Oh, I hate that song!"

Winona smiles. "So do I."

Silence, then: "It was the middle of summer on my wedding day - perfect weather." She laughs, if you can call it that. "Now, that really is ironic."

"Would you get married again?"

Ava tilts her head back, eyes up past Winona's head, taking in something she can't see. "I don't think I'd mind it," Ava says slowly. "What about you?"

Winona looks rueful. "They frown upon being married to two men at the same time, even in Kentucky."

Ava smiles at that. "You aren't divorced yet?"

"Gary's disappeared. Run off somewhere." She shrugs. "We had things settled, for the most part, but the papers weren't signed." She shakes her head. "Raylan seems to feel responsible somehow. I get the feeling he knows more than he's telling me."

"You think somethin' happened to him ... to Gary?" Ava asks. "Raylan wouldn't..."

"No, no, I don't think Raylan did anything to him," Winona says. "But anytime it comes up ... us not being married, he apologizes ... like it's his fault and not Gary's."

"Well, Raylan does tend to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders."

Winona laughs. "Yes, he does." Quiet. "That's hard to live with sometimes."

Ava sits forward, elbows on the table, chin in her hand. "Would you change anything about him, if you could?"

"Oh, wow. That's a loaded question." She thinks for a moment, then grins. "Not his kissing. He's pretty good at that."

Ava laughs.

"Back to what you just said. I'd love it if Raylan would relax more. Even when there's nothing immediate going on and he's not working, he's always ... _on_... always expecting something. That can be exhausting." She looks up. "What about you? Anything you'd change about Boyd?"

Ava grimaces. "If you'd asked me that a year ago I could've written you a book. I kind of wish we could stay out of trouble, but I guess that's just the way things are." She glances at Winona. "And that wasn't exactly what you asked." Her face grows thoughtful, eyes serious and darkening. "Sometimes I think things would go easier if he weren't so smart."

"Would you like him as much if he wasn't?"

"Probably not." A brief smile. "Maybe... I don't know. A little less intense. Sometimes it's painful just looking at him, all the things that go on in his head and he tears himself apart over them." Her fingers are restless again, twisting around each other.

"So," Winona says, considering, "what it comes down to is that they both need to relax more."

Ava buries her face in her hands. "Oh, my God..." She looks at Winona between her fingers. "What have we done?"

Winona laughs slightly, light. "I ask myself that a lot, believe me."

"Quite a lot I wouldn't change," Ava adds after a moment; and one corner of her mouth turns up. "He's a pretty good kisser, too." Her eyes now are wide and innocent. "You remember that?"

"You're not going to forget this any time soon, are you?"

Still innocent, she shrugs. "Well, you haven't. Besides" -amusement now- "it's too much fun. And you didn't answer the question."

Winona rolls her eyes. "Yes, I remember that."

Ava sits back, grinning.

"Why do you suppose we're not being more 'bitchy' about this?" Winona asks. "I mean, you especially since you just found out but..."

"I'd imagine we both are pretty secure in their feelings _now_ , and that's all that matters, right?"

"I suppose you're right." Winona pulls her cell phone from her pocket and glances at it. "I wish they'd call."

"Yeah, me, too." Ava sighs. "Me, too."


	6. Secrets and Lies

The sound comes from outside, something raucous, disjointed, swooping through the air in an ugly jangle of ruined notes.

"What the hell is that?"

They had agreed to take turns sleeping and against his own expectations, Raylan's head had sunk down on his chest, eyes closing and there had been oblivion. And now this.

Words start to form out of the cacophony.

 _"They'll be dyin' on the mountain_

 _When they die._

 _They'll be dyin' on the mountain..."_

They each crouch at their respective windows, frozen, while Dickie's voice echoes around the trees. There is a brief, merciful, pause and then the second verse starts up.

 _"We'll be shootin' up the Marshal-"_

"You've gotta be shitting me," Raylan says out loud.

 _"We'll be shootin' up that outlaw-"_

"Make him stop, Raylan."

"I would if I could. Damn. That man can't carry a tune in a bucket."

"We could sing ourselves, try to drown him out."

"I _can_ shoot you."

 _"We'll be drinkin' up the moonshine-"_

"I can't take much more of this."

"You stop him, then."

"He's on your side of the hut."

Raylan looks out of his window and for a second there is a dancing scarecrow of a figure in the moonlight: arms spread wide, one leg dragging slightly behind the other, face turned up to the sky. He wonders if he's ever hated anyone quite so much in his whole life. His finger itches and the gun is in his hand before he's aware of it.

The moonlight plays tricks, despite its clarity. Dickie barely seems to move but suddenly he's gone, silver beading the grass and the leaves on the raindrops that still cling and deep shadows. But he's still singing.

 _"They'll be dyin' on the mountain_

 _When they die-"_

"Hey, Dickie," Boyd yells suddenly. "Is that a hound-dog you're killing out there?"

"Oh, that's _funny_ ," comes the answer. "You're a funny guy, Boyd Crowder. Does Ava appreciate that? 'Cos it's always seemed to me that Ava would be the kind of a woman who would appreciate a man with a good sense of humour. I've been thinking when all of this is over maybe I'll go down and see li'l Ava, make sure she's all right... Get me some of that sugar she's always showing around the place."

"I should remind you, Dickie, of the fate of the last man that laid his hands upon Ava when she did not desire it."

Laughter, it catches through the undergrowth. "You think I can't take her and her little pea-shooter? I know how to handle a woman, Boyd, even if you don't. Seems to me it's about time Ava had herself a real man. Seems to me that's what she's been asking for."

More laughter and whoops and a shot is fired into the air.

"He's mine, Raylan," Boyd says, in that quiet, conversational tone that always makes his neck-hair stand on end. "Helen notwithstanding, when we get out of here that little son-of-a-bitch is mine."

Raylan looks at Boyd. Sees that he's barely hanging on. While the other man's presence has been grating, at best, for the past few hours, Raylan knows, somehow beyond any doubt, that without Boyd, he's a dead man.

"Hey, Dickie!" he calls.

"What Marshal? Are you ready to nee-gotiate terms of surrender?" A manic laugh.

Raylan keeps his back to the wall a good foot from the window, leaning in to yell: "Nah. I was just wonderin' what it felt like."

"What? To know I'm gonna win this? 'Cause you and I both know you ain't comin' out of there alive."

"I was wonderin' what it was like to know that your mama, your own mama, didn't think you was worth seein' again ... one more time 'fore she died."

Silence.

"Once she knew Doyle was dead, wasn't much use goin' on for her, I guess. She sure drank that apple pie quick enough."

A volley of shots hits the wall and he and Boyd both retreat to the corners, hunching down. "You shut up, Raylan! SHUT UP!" It's a howl, wild and raw and animalistic.

"I think you've upset him," Boyd says, voice muffled.

"Yeah, just a little."

 

ooOoo

 

Her feet are elevated on a stack of cushions, the hot-water bottle wedged at the base of her spine delivering blissful waves of heat that unlock the knotted muscles. She hasn't been sleeping, just drifting in and out of a waking doze but it's enough to disorient her and enough for her to see and hear Raylan and think that he is there and she can smell his aftershave and when consciousness returns fully she cannot quite understand why he isn't beside her.

There's a clock somewhere in the house, its _tick-tick-tick_ the only thing she can hear apart from the occasional rustle when Ava turns a page.

Curled up in a chair, book resting on the arm, blonde hair gleaming under the lamplight. She isn't really reading the book; or if she is, she must be reading each paragraph at least three times over before moving on. Her gaze is fixed on the arrangement of flower heads across the surface of the table and then she shakes herself and her head bows again and she is so still and her back held so rigid that she looks as though she will shatter if she moves the wrong way.

"What do we do if someone does come?" Winona asks.

The head raises and Ava looks at her levelly. "We go into the cellar."

"Really?" Her eyebrows go up. "You'll go along with that?"

One corner of Ava's mouth curls up and her forehead creases. "Personal experience. Plus," she adds, "if anyone does come, it's dark down there. They open the door, they can't see down but they're against the light. Makes them a real easy target."

Winona shifts, crosses one ankle over the other. "You have given this a lot of thought."

"Kinda goes with the turf."

Everything has reached a hazy, heavy stage. She watches Ava from under eyelids that feel weighted and her words come slow. "Being with Boyd, you mean?"

"Being from Harlan."

Winona closes her eyes. There's still the incessant monotony of the clock and she can feel it crawling under her skin, borrowing down until there is nothing but the counting down of seconds in the middle of their stultifying lethargy. "You know, you all say that like being from Harlan explains everything and I guess it does, and I get that; the thing is I don't really because I don't really understand what it means."

Another rustle, then a soft thud as the book is placed on the table. "Guess you wouldn't. Folks can live round these parts for twenty years or more but they'll still be outsiders. I know that don't make it any easier."

"You think?" She shifts again, moving the bottle until it lies against her spine and numbs the ache spreading up. "So, the cellar. What's it like down there?"

"Damp. It smells." Fingers through her hair and a breath caught that doesn't seem to do her any good. "Of course, if I'd stayed down there to begin with, we wouldn't be sitting here now."

Winona forces her eyes open, holds them wide. There's a crack running along the ceiling and she follows its faint line. "Why's that?"

When she looks across, Ava is watching her curiously, working something out. "Raylan didn't tell you about any of it, did he?"

She frowns. "Tell me what?"

A pause.

"Dickie Bennett shot me."

She is awake then, struggling upright and her feet swinging down onto the floor. Her head spins. "You- What?"

"In the kitchen." She sounds so calm and she is curled in her chair, all fine elegant features and long legs tucked up. "We knew they were probably coming and-" She sets her teeth on her lip. "Boyd wasn't here. There were other men in the house and he told me to stay in the cellar. I couldn't take it down there. Bowman-" Another stop, hair tossed away from her shoulders and the hand on the arm of her chair shows white at the knuckles. "Bowman locked me down there sometimes. Even without that I still couldn't have stood it. So, I came out. And when Dickie came he came for me and he shot me. That's why Boyd is out there. He won't let it lie." She looks at Winona and she is fierce. "If I could have shot him myself, I would have. I hope one of them gets him. He has it coming."

Winona moistens her lips and when she speaks her voice is ragged. "No doubt. Wh- When was this?"

"Same time Raylan was shot."

Raylan. She had thought he would die. She had sat in the hospital corridor on a hard plastic chair and Art had talked at her and had his arm around her for a long time and she had thought about the child inside of her and her love maybe bleeding to death in a room away from her. She remembers the tubes and the bleep of monitors and the way his skin had been cold and stiff and his eyes sunken and the bruises and welts on his body that no bullet had made.

The crack above her head softens and blurs into a series of lines, into a chasm. She blinks hard and when she looks at Ava the other woman is still studying her with the same puzzled frown, like Winona is a problem for her to solve.

"What is it you two talk about?" Ava asks.

Against the cushions she shakes her head and her throat is thick and tight. "Sometimes I don't know." There's a long piece of silence, and then Winona adds. "I suppose Boyd tells you everything."

Ava looks at her for a moment. "I told him he could. Asked him to, as it happens. He tells me a lot, but probably not everything." She shrugs. "That's not Harlan, that's just men. They don't think we can handle it."

"Raylan works with a woman," Winona scoffs. "She's a good marshal, he says so all the time."

"Yeah, but he don't sleep with her," Ava says, serious. "She's not havin' his baby, you are. And he wants to protect you."

"This isn't protecting me." Her face contorts, a mixture of anger and a frustration that goes back more than ten years now. "This is shutting me out."

"I bet he don't see it that way," Ava says softly. "Just talk to him."

"I've tried," she says, miserably. "Nothing changes."

"Try again." Winona looks up and the light rings Ava's face, an ethereal dance across her features; she looks otherworldly and wise. "Just try again."

 

ooOoo

 

"You want to talk about death, Raylan?" Dickie, again, and there's something thick and slurring to his voice. "You want to talk death and women? How about Helen, huh? How 'bout the night she died. She begged, y'know that? Said she'd do anything, same as any other old two-bit whore. Cursed you out an' all. An' that woman couldn't shoot for shit!" More bullets biting into the wood.

Raylan feels the tick in his jaw again, the clenching of his teeth and he knows it's goading but he still feels the rising rush of white-heat anger.

"Dickie Bennett." Boyd's voice, clear and calm. "In some cultures of the world they cut out the tongue of a liar."

"Oh! Oh-ho, you think I'm lying?"

"No, I know you are."

"So do I, Dickie," Raylan yells back, in control once more. "That woman gave it back to Arlo for years. She wouldn't beg for anything from the likes of you."

"I ain't kidding about his tongue," Boyd murmurs.

"Don't tempt me."

"The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it."

"Who-"

"Oscar Wilde." Short.

"Was he the gay dude?"

There's a groan from across the room and Raylan smiles in the darkness.

"You boys must be getting be getting pretty thirsty in there."

Raylan closes his eyes, keeps the back of his head against the wall.

"I got me some 'shine out here. The good stuff. Why don't you come on out, we can do us some shots and get this thing on. Now, what do you say to that?"

"If it's the same glass your mama used," Raylan calls back, "do us all a favour and drink the lot."

Dickie's words are lost in an unintelligible high-pitched roar.

There's a scraping sound across the way and Raylan's head turns, sharp, eyes peering into the dark recesses. Boyd has pulled himself up and he lurches across to the back of their hut, one foot dragging behind him and the sudden resemblance draws a wave of revulsion.

"What are you doing?"

The edge of a tarpaulin gets pulled back, clouds of dust sent up into the air. Scrabbling and a sharp hiss of breath when too much weight is put on the bad leg.

"I'm looking to see if any of that 'shine we used to bring up here got left behind."

Raylan stares at him. "Oh. Great. That's just great, Boyd, getting drunk is sure going to answer all of our problems."

"That was not my intent." He kneels clumsily, searching through the dirt-clogged pile. "I was thinking more about its potential for combustibility."

A shiver across the back of his neck, skin suddenly tight and prickling. "I'm not quite with you, Boyd."

Boyd's head turns and in the clear light from the full moon through the window his eyes glitter and the slow pull at the corners of his mouth is a diabolical smile.

"I believe I may have an idea to put an end to this."


	7. Memories

There is no way to lie that is comfortable and in the end Winona pushes herself up from the sofa, stretches out her back. She's become almost accustomed to the feel, a low dragging burn that settles at the base of her spine and radiates out. She links her fingers together behind her head, thumbs pressing into the bunched muscles in her neck.

It isn't anymore comfortable at the motel, most of time, in all honesty; before this child is born, she swears, she and Raylan are going to get a proper place.

Ava is asleep, at last, face half-buried in the plump cushions in the chair, one arm hanging limp over the side. She doesn't look particularly comfortable either, but it is sleep, of a sort. An uneasy one, if the dampness of the fine hairs across her forehead and the creases in her face are a testimony to it.

Winona pads about the room, comes to a stop by the bureau that holds a collection of books and papers and a pile of photographs, most of them old. The corners of some marked by diagonal lines. She glances at Ava but there is no movement from the golden head. Picking up the photographs, Winona holds them under the light and studies the faces.

No-one is immediately recognisable but she guesses that the little girl in the arms of a pretty woman with a radiant smile is Ava herself.

Family photos, Ava and her mother and a much older woman and Winona passes over them quickly. She stops at the school pictures, arrested by the boy with the baseball-bat, cap pulled over his eyes and an all-too familiar set to his jaw.

She peers at the photograph, taking in the lines and wondering about the seriousness of his expression, young as he had been. She flicks through. Ava, still just a kid, and a young man with his arm around her, good-looking and a belligerent stare.

More days catalogued: proms, homecoming, a wedding. It truly had been a beautiful day. The wedding-party all squint into the camera against the sunlight. All except one. An Army uniform, medals on his chest and the same strangely unfocused gaze that she remembers. Except in one, where the camera has caught an unguarded moment and while Ava is looking somewhere beyond the frame, in the background he is looking at her and the gaze is devouring.

Winona looks up suddenly and finds Ava watching her over the back of her chair. She drops the photographs, a burn on her fingers.

"I'm sorry, I-"

Ava shrugs. "It's all right. They're- What's that phrase? In plain sight?"

"I'm sorry," she says again.

"Don't be. It was all a long time ago anyhow."

 

ooOoo

 

"Hey, MacGyver, can you hurry it up?"

"This is a delicate procedure, Raylan, unless you are feeling a particular need to meet your Heavenly Maker on this day."

"Heavenly Maker? I thought you didn't believe in that anymore."

"Now and then I feel a twitch upon the thread."

"Huh?"

"Your literary education is sadly lacking, my friend."

"Tell me again why you're makin' two of those things." Raylan says, looking at the discarded remains of his cell phone laid out in front of Boyd.

He doesn't look up. There comes a sigh, as if infinite patience is being exhausted. "The first one is a distraction. I'm not wasting our shrapnel" -he gestures to the pieces of broken glass, rusty nails and screws and other hard bits they've been able to scrounge- "in this one. It's for show. The second bomb is what will get them. Hopefully."

"Oh, like the terrorists do, right? Set something off, bring in the first responders, then blow them all up."

A flash of teeth. "Exactly."

Their search through the hut yielded a small kerosene lamp - soot-stained and the wick smokes - but it gives enough light to see by. The lighting of it had brought another fusillade from outside and Raylan thinks it possible the hut will collapse around their ears before they get the chance to do anything else. He keeps a defensive position, trying to keep watch on the windows and the door at the same time. He spares another glance for Boyd. The man's fingers move fast but methodically, a precision born of practice.

"How many of those have you made?" Raylan enquires, curious.

Hands still moving and a gaze that doesn't break focus. "Most of my skills were gained under the tutelage of the United States Army," he replies, answering the question he hadn't been asked.

"You know you're gonna have to throw that thing, right?" Raylan stretches out his arm and winces at the movement. It's all he can do to hold the gun steady. He flexes and balls his cramped fingers into a fist easing the stiffness. "I never was much of a pitcher anyways."

A cracked jar being crammed with a mess of wires and assorted parts. And a good half-liter of moonshine that had, somehow, gone overlooked in the intervening years. The jar sits close to the lamp and, like Boyd, Raylan finds himself thinking about its _combustibility_. "No, that was Johnny's territory."

Raylan keeps his eyes trained on the other man. "How is Johnny these days?"

Boyd looks up and for that moment he is still, fingers holding the delicate wiring from the inside of Raylan's wristwatch. Its carcass lies discarded, a scratched, battered grouping of metal and leather on the dusty floor. "Better. Never be what he was, physically, but he's leading a productive life."

"Helping you create havoc?"

A half-sigh, half-laugh out of Boyd's corner of flickering light and leaping shadow. "Your thinking takes place entirely within boxes, Raylan Givens, you might want to be looking at moving beyond that, expanding your mind."

"Uh-huh. Isn't that what they said about LSD?" He squints into the corner. "Are you trying to tell me you're dealing in LSD now?"

When Boyd answers his voice holds the affectionate, exasperated indulgence of an adult talking to a slightly backward child. "That somewhat proves my point."

The sickly light scuds across the walls and ceiling and while Raylan remembers that fire was used to keep away darkness and danger and evil he can't help but think of all the things that are attracted to the light and he imagines Dickie and his buddies creeping closer.

The clink of metal stops and the kerosene lamp is extinguished without warning. Darkness pours in and for a moment he can't catch his breath, feels the walls that he can no longer see draw in, pushing close around him. He focuses on the window, on the sky lightening behind the peaks of the mountains. They are jagged black silhouettes but they rise to the open, to the expanse of thin cloud and fading stars.

He hears a scuffling sound as Boyd pulls himself up from the floor, the thump of the rifle butt and Boyd's now-irregular tread.

"Hold onto your hat," Boyd tells him. "We're about to light up this mountain."

 

ooOoo

 

Ava sits cross-legged on the floor, elbow resting on the low table. The photographs are spread out across its surface, the tips of her fingers resting against them.

"They used to be in an album. A proper wedding album with gold lettering on the cover. I got rid of it. Cut it up, I even burned it up." She shakes her head. "Crazy thing is that when it came to the photographs I couldn't bring myself to do it. That doesn't make any sense, does it?"

Winona shrugs helplessly. She doesn't say that she understands because she and Gary were never like Ava and Bowman, not ever, and it seems stupid and condescending to suggest otherwise.

But there's a way that Ava looks at her, something uncertain and pleading and she hears herself say, "I still have some of Gary's things. I mean, things that were ... ours. Some things he gave me." A stupid novelty T-shirt he had brought back once from a conference, that she would never wear under any circumstances, but they had laughed about it. "I got rid of a lot of stuff and most of the rest is in storage but there's two boxes there. They've got a lot of photographs in them, too. Our wedding, our honeymoon..."

"Where did you go?"

"Cancun."

Ava's eyebrows go up. "Cancun, wow. What's that like?"

"It..." She takes a breath. "It wasn't as nice as you'd think."

"I've never been to Mexico," Ava says, a pensive note.

"We didn't have a honeymoon when Raylan and me got married - he had to go back to work. So when I married Gary, I thought: this time, I want something different, something really special." She smiles, rueful. "Y'know, like _that_ was the problem the first time around. And don't get me wrong, it's really beautiful down there and the hotel was great and we had a really nice time but it was like... It's like you've been waiting to go somewhere your whole life and then when you get there you think: is this it?"

There is silence and Ava nods.

"Raylan doesn't know about the boxes. I don't think he'd understand." She glances at the photographs. They haven't been hidden away, not put someplace where their representations of the past cannot be seen. "I married Gary for a reason. I left him for a whole lot _more_ reasons," she adds, "but I chose to be with him for a really long time and- And I don't mean that Raylan wants me to pretend that none of it happened or that Gary never existed but after everything that went on, I don't that he'd really understand why I wouldn't want to forget it. Not all of it." She pauses, takes another breath. "Thing is, me keeping hold of them sort of feels like I'm betraying Raylan. But I don't want to give them up."

Ava rouses herself, pushes her hair back from her face. "Raylan wasn't around most of the time you were married, was he?"

Winona frowns. "No."

"There's no point in me hiding things away or trying to pretend that none of it happened - Boyd was there the whole time, he already knows all of it. I used to hate him for that sometimes," she adds softly. "Now it just means that I don't need to explain anything."

Talking and not talking and never quite sure who to trust with what is said-

She used to think that it was just her; then she used to think it was her and Raylan but time changes things and it's everyone. But it still comes unexpectedly, finding an unlikely confidante.

"We lost a baby, too." It comes out quiet in the near darkness of the parlor, and Ava looks up from her position on the floor as if she's not even sure Winona spoke. "About a year before we split up. I guess that probably had something to do with it, or maybe it just made all the other problems worse. Raylan's not the best communicator on a good day and, well, we didn't talk about it. I felt like he didn't care, even though I knew that wasn't true." She smiles, wistful. "I wonder sometimes, if we'd had that baby..."

"I don't wonder at all." Ava is emphatic. "A baby wouldn't have changed Bowman. He just would've had someone else to take it out on."

Winona leans forward, stretching. "You might have left him for good."

"Or shot him sooner," Ava says. There's a pause as both women consider that.

"So, did Gary not want kids?"

"It just never happened. First Gary wanted to get 'established'. That didn't really turn out the way he planned. We hadn't talked about it in a couple of years. By the time he decided the time was right..." She bites her bottom lip and studies the crack in the ceiling.

"Let me guess," Ava says. "Raylan was back."

"Yeah." Winona slides off the sofa, eases onto the floor, pressing her back against the sofa. She pulls off one of the cushions, sits on it. "You know, I don't have any pictures of Raylan when he was young."

"Really?"

"It's like, when he left Harlan he left everything behind. Which, really, is what he did." She laughs at herself slightly and picks up one of the high-school photos. "He was cute back then."

Ava smiles. "Yes, he was. They both were." Her fingers move over the glossy surfaces."Here." Ava says, handing her the photograph. She flips through the stack and finds another, younger Raylan. "This one, too. You'll need it to know how much that boy looks like his daddy."

"You think it's a boy, huh? Are you cursing me?" Winona laughs.

"No, just the way you're carrying. My grandmama was a midwife. She delivered half the babies in this holler." Ava pulls out the picture that caught Winona's eye earlier and points to the older woman. "She always said high for girls and straight out for boys, and since you look kinda like you swallowed a basketball..." She grins and her eyes sparkle.

"Thanks for that image." She rubs her belly thoughtfully. "I think it's a boy, too. To tell the truth, I can't quite picture Raylan with a girl."

"He'd be a lost cause." Her attention goes back to the photographs and wonder, bemusement, chase across her face. "God, we were all so young. I look at her sometimes I wonder what the hell she was thinking."

Winona frowns, wondering who she's talking about until she realizes Ava means herself, talking about the young woman she had been as though she's a separate person.

"What would you tell her, if you could?"

Ava folds her arms on the table, rests her chin on them. Lines around her eyes, she looks like she's gone far past exhaustion, existing in a space where she's too tired to sleep. Her shoulders rise and fall. "Don't marry Bowman, I guess. Apart from that... I just don't know. I thought we're meant to get wiser as we get older."

She remembers a bar in Salt Lake City and how a man in a cowboy hat smiled at her, a little crooked and his eyes crinkling, and losing her heart to that smile; she thinks about the wreckage of that marriage and how Gary's infectious enthusiasm seemed, in her head if never really in her heart, the answer to all that - and when that had fallen apart she hadn't really been surprised; and now, Raylan, again, and that motel room she hates and this second chance at something she thought was long out of reach. And she doesn't know either.


	8. Fire in the Hole

"Are you ready?"

Raylan blows out a breath. "As I'll ever be. Just make sure you blow them up and not us."

"You're a man of little faith."

"No, just a lot of experience."

Boyd's head turns and for a moment they look at each other and the gaze holds. He looks away.

"What is it you do believe in?"

"What?"

He can't quite make out Boyd's face, not enough to see the expressions that cross it, but he can hear him just fine and certainly well enough - and he knows him well enough - to hear the guardedness, the uncertainty in that one syllable.

"Seems to me you need something to ... what shall I call it? Champion? If I'm being charitable - which I don't particularly feel, by the way, but let's just say for the sake of argument that that's the word we're going with. What is it these days?"

"You'd best stand back." Quiet, serious, and he can't still can't see him clearly but he can see enough that Boyd's hand is tight around the bomb. Raylan takes a few steps away and holds the gun low at his side. It has never felt so heavy and his arm screams with pain, tendrils of it coiling through the skin and muscle.

Boyd steadies himself, leaning heavily on his good leg, feeling the weight of the bomb in his hand, judging it, knowing it. His arm moves back in a slow arc, his other hand stretching out to mark the target. There is a moment of poise, of counterbalance, and then he moves. He staggers slightly, swears as his weight jars his ankle but the missile traces a line through the sky and when the impact comes the night is turned to orange and red and the trees smoulder and smoke, damp wood still catching under the intense flame.

There are cries from outside, yells, and figures, suddenly, dancing in and out of smoke and flame. Raylan counts four of them and he nods at Boyd, looks back out at the scene and the itch in his trigger-finger almost overcomes the searing agony racing down his arm.

"Ava."

Raylan squints over his shoulder. "What?"

"The answer to your question," Boyd says, level and unwavering like the world isn't on fire all around them. "Ava." He steadies himself again, braced more against the window frame. He grins and Raylan knows what's coming next and feels his stomach twist.

"Fire in the hole!"

Fire and earth thrown into the sky, bits of rock raining down and snakes of flame racing through the trees. And screams. The acrid smell of smoke hangs heavy, a fug between them and the devastation outside.

"Just for the record," Raylan says when his ears have stopped ringing, "I really hate it when you say that."

 

ooOoo

 

Winona wakes and looks around. She's fallen asleep again, right there on the floor, the photographs of Raylan clutched in her hand, and Ava is nowhere to be seen. The windows framing the front wall of the parlor are still rectangular blocks of darkness, but there's light around the edges and the birds are calling to each other.

"Hey," Ava says, appearing in the doorway. "I took a shower. Had to do something. You're more than welcome. I put out some extra towels."

A shower sounds like heaven, but putting the same clothes on after always makes her feel dirty again. "I'll wait for that, but it would be nice to freshen up." Surely the men would be back soon. Surely.

"The bathroom's upstairs. First door on the left. I'll make more coffee." Ava disappears again, back toward the kitchen and Winona mounts the stairs slowly, limbs heavy. The bath, like the rest of the house, is neat and homey. The fixtures are old, both the tub and the sink carry the rings of rust from hard water, but it's clean and there are bright yellow towels laid out on the counter, along with a hairbrush and some lotion. The soap in the dish is shaped like flowers. She turns on the tap and splashes her face. Running her wet hands through her hair, she uses the brush and gathers it back into a low ponytail. She smoothes some lotion on her face and hands and shrugs at the haggard woman in the mirror. "Best I can do, under the circumstances."

She's on the stairs, hand on the rail, when the phone rings. It's not a cell phone: hers is in her pocket and rings with some rap song Raylan put on as a joke; Ava's never leaves her sight, but this ring is the old fashioned tinny klaxon-call of a house phone. Her legs go weak and she grabs at the railing with white knuckled fear. She takes the last few stairs in a rush, her heart beating wildly.

When Winona bursts into the kitchen, Ava stands by the sink, staring at the phone. She shoots Winona a glance, her eyes shadowed and fearful. Her hand trembles as she picks up the phone. "Hello?" Her voice comes out high pitched, tentative. Then something shudders through her and her shoulders slump; she shakes her head at Winona and mouths, "Arlo." Winona sighs, all energy flooding out of her in a rush, and sinks into the chair.

She can only hear one side of the conversation.

"No, they aren't back. We- I haven't heard anything." Silence. "I don't know." More silence, then, "No, Arlo. I'm fine. You don't need to come over."

Winona laughs to herself. Sort of. That would serve Raylan right, she thinks, for his daddy to find out _this_ way.

"Well, I sure do appreciate that, Arlo, you're real sweet. I promise we'll call as soon as they get back. Bye now." The receiver is replaced with a quiet click and Ava stays standing, hand resting on the telephone, her back to Winona. Her shoulders are set high again, neck stiff and every muscle is stretched.

"That man is stubborn." There's a flatness to her voice.

"I never would have guessed," Winona replies. Tension that had lessened returns, banding around her head and pulling tight. The ache in her lower back starts up again, throbbing angrily.

"Family trait evidently."

"How bad is the reception around here?"

A pause and Ava moves away from the telephone, takes a few steps towards the sink and stands in front of the window. "It varies. Up in the hills it's pretty hit-and-miss, 'specially after a storm like we had. Don't understand why that is, but that's what happens."

"Ava-"

The head jerks, flinching under the gentleness of Winona's tone, denying it, and Winona doesn't say anything else. Her throat feels thick, tight and for a moment she keeps her head in her hands. The rattle of a cupboard door being yanked open so hard it rebounds against the wall pulls her out of it.

Ava gets out a large bowl, then another. A second cupboard yields flour, shortening, and other baking ingredients, all of which land on the kitchen counters a little heavier than necessary. "I've got to do something," she says when she notices Winona's curious gaze. "Keep busy. I start thinking now, I'll go crazy." A lock of hair escapes the grip at the back of her head and she shoves it back into place roughly. "Well, more crazy."

"Me, too." Winona stands. "Please, let me help."

"You know how to make biscuits?"

Winona shakes her head. "I can follow a recipe."

The hair slips again and Ava drags it all back, tying it up with hands that shake slightly. Hardness etches itself across her face and there's a tight whiteness around her mouth. "Okay then, I'll tell you the recipe while you make 'em."

"I can read," Winona says and there's a sharpness to her voice.

Ava's eyebrows rise. "Recipe's up here." She says, tapping the side of her head. "I suppose I should write it down sometime. It just gets passed down, mother to daughter in my family."

Winona takes a moment and the band around her head gives an extra squeeze. "The only thing my mama passed down to me was her temper."

"Well, that's something." Ava fiddles with the bags of flour and sugar on the counter, starts to say something, stops and instead out comes: "So, you don't cook at all?"

"Our current accommodations don't lend themselves to much in the way of cooking." She shrugs. "I cooked some when I was with Gary, although he loved eating out. And I can make some of Raylan's favorites ... fried chicken for one."

"He does love fried chicken," Ava agrees. Something then that rises, a memory that clouds across and then gets shaken off.

"I couldn't even make that when we were first married. Art, that's Raylan's boss, his wife Faylene taught me when we were all down at Glynco."

"I think I've known how to fry a chicken since I was ten or so."

Winona looks down at her hands, knows how fast she can record the proceedings in a courtroom; she knows all the legal terms, and as much about the law as any lawyer. Her transcripts have been used in appeals and retrials and Judge Reardon says she's the best court reporter he's ever had. But here in a simple kitchen she feels hopelessly inadequate. Despite the nerviness in Ava's jerking movements and the edge to her voice that raises it to a higher pitch than usual, she still seems competent in all things.

Winona can fire a gun but she doesn't know if she could kill someone if she had to. She hired one of Gary's interior decorator friends to do up the house and afterwards she been pleased with the results but had then wished she'd done it herself. Every time she fries a chicken she uses the recipe that Faylene wrote down for her.

But she can do it, all of it, when she knows how, when she tries. She rolls up her sleeves and walks to the counter. "Tell me what to do."


	9. Knockin' on Heaven's Door

It's been twenty long minutes since Boyd's moonshine bomb went off and there's been nothing but silence in the woods outside the hut. Raylan crouches under the window, his arm throbbing. He raises his head and tired eyes sweep the clearing and the edge of the woods searching for movement. Nothing. At some point they're going to have to take the chance and leave this shelter, inspect the damage, look for casualties.

Boyd reads his thoughts. "I reckon we could stay in here 'til it's full daylight, but we might as well take a look around."

"You go first," Raylan suggests.

"It might be more advisable for the person with two good legs to lead the way."

"Always with the excuses," Raylan says. He moves to the left of the window and pushes up, knees and back stiff and complaining. Stretching gingerly he raises his gun and checks the chamber in the dim light. He's usually good at keeping a tally in his head, remembering how many shots he has left, but he's in no mood to take any chances.

"Three rounds," he tells Boyd. "How many you got?"

"Two."

"All right, then." Slowly, cautiously, eyes following the tree line, Raylan swings the door open, standing to the side, when there's no response from anyone outside, he eases himself out the door, crouching low. He feels Boyd move in behind him.

"One down left," Boyd says.

Raylan glances that way and sees the body, or what's left of it. There's no need to check for a pulse. "Not Dickie."

"Not Harris, neither."

"So, we're down to three."

"Yes, Raylan." That grin. Again. Even now. "Four minus one would still be three. You have admirable math skills."

Raylan swears again for the hundredth time that when they get out of this he's going to kill him. Slowly.

There's a sputtering cough and both men start. "Back and to the right," Raylan hisses. He sees Boyd slip around the corner of the cabin, hears Boyd's voice, low and measured, the words unintelligible, and then a muffled groan, a hollow thump, and silence.

Boyd is back, leaning heavily on the rifle again. "That was Harris. Two down."

Raylan doesn't ask.

They both move forward hugging the edge of the woods. A twig snaps. "Sorry," Raylan mutters. He looks ahead and steps out from the brush about a foot, where there's less debris and the ground is still soft and damp from yesterday's rain. Boyd follows suit. They progress this way slowly, Raylan facing out into the clearing, alert and focused as he can be on so little sleep, while Boyd's eyes scan the woods.

"I spy number three," Boyd says. He makes a sharp gesture with his thumb, and Raylan sees the dark-haired man, splayed out, neck at an unnatural angle.

So, only Dickie left.

They work their way down the path back towards where the truck is parked without any sign of the little bastard. Raylan is torn between the need for things to be finished once and for all and an exhaustion almost beyond endurance. The desire to see Winona, to leave Harlan and return to where things make some kind of sense is overwhelming.

"I am not leaving these woods until we find him and deal with him, Raylan."

Dammit to hell. How does that man always know what he's thinking?

"Best be retracing our path then," Raylan says with a sigh. They trade this time, Boyd's gaze turned on the hut and the overgrown path, while Raylan peers into the shadows.

"Blood," Raylan says. "Here." He points. "And here." There's a pool of blood the size of his hand, then a trail of drops and smudges leading deeper into the trees.

Boyd steps in front of him. "This is my journey, Raylan," he says quietly. "I started it, and I should be the one to finish it."

Raylan doesn't argue, he just falls into step behind the other man, gun in hand, finger on the trigger. _Make a move,_ he thinks. _Give me a reason._ And that, he supposes, is the difference between he and Boyd, for the moment anyway. Boyd already has his reason. He won't need to justify any action he takes today, to himself or anyone else.

"Shhh." Boyd turns, finger on his lips.

"I didn't say nothin'," Raylan hisses, irritated.

Boyd holds up a hand motioning him to stop. The woods are silent. The sun, dim as it is, won't penetrate the canopy of leaves for hours yet. No birds. No breeze. Then Raylan hears it. A long, slow, viscous rattle of breath. He turns his head, searching for the source.

Boyd moves left, into the underbrush. He stops so suddenly Raylan has to step back to avoid running into him. He looks over Boyd's shoulder. Dickie Bennett is propped against a tree, eyes closed, hand clutching at the hole in his chest. There's another wound in his arm, his jacket sleeve dark with blood. More blood seeps between his fingers. His other hand lies limp at his side, the pistol slipped from his grasp.

Boyd crouches down and pokes the man with the butt of the rifle. Dickie's eyes flutter open, struggle to focus. "Raylan Givens," he says. Not the victory crow of earlier but a kind of resignation. His fingers twitch at the butt of the gun and Raylan moves, placing a foot on it. "You here to end me?"

"Not me, Dickie." Raylan shakes his head. "Not him either."

Boyd's head turns slowly and he blinks. "You'd deny me this, Raylan?"

"Deny you becoming a murderer? Again," Raylan says. "Yeah, well, I just thought maybe we'd let nature take its course here." He kneels down, holsters his gun. "Gettin' a little hard to breathe, Dickie? That's because there's a big old hole in your lung and you're gonna die. It could be an hour from now, or a day from now; or..." Raylan picks up the pistol, places it in Dickie's hand.

"Raylan..." Boyd lets the name stretch out. "What do you propose?"

"I propose we give the man an option."

"Like he gave Helen?"

Raylan breathes deep and deliberately releases the tension in his jaw. Dickie's eyes have closed again but Boyd shoves a knee into the bloodied sleeve of the jacket and they fly open as a howl of pain escapes his lips.

"Gawd dammitt. Kill me already if that's what yer gonna do," he wails.

"We ain't gonna kill you, Dickie," Raylan says. "You're already dead. It's just a matter of how soon." He gestures to the pistol in Dickie's hand."We're leavin' you a choice. You can take it, like your mama did, or let the animals find you tonight. I couldn't give a damn which."

"Please, Raylan." There's desperation in the voice, the same damn whining cowardice Dickie displayed on his knees in the woods that night. _Maybe I should have ended it there._

"Don't leave me here, Raylan." He coughs, a wet, bloody affair that lasts several minutes. When it's over his body still shakes and he rolls his eyes towards Boyd.

"Boyd-"

"You have the temerity to ask for my mercy?" He leans on the rifle and his eyes glitter.

"I never meant Ava no harm, Boyd, I swear. It was a mistake, she-"

"Stop talking." The glitter flares hard and his hand tightens on the rifle.

"Ain't gonna be more than a couple of hours," Raylan says. "Not pleasant hours, by any means, but I figure you'll be dead long before the coyotes and foxes tear into you."

He turns and heads back to the path. "You comin', Boyd?"

"In a minute."

Raylan continues to walk, slow enough that Boyd can catch up. The voice comes again, Dickie's, still thin but there's a harder edge to it.

"Hey, Raylan!"

He turns, Boyd behind him and he sees Dickie's hand lift and a flash of metal and both men move.

There are shots, and then silence.


	10. Wanderers

Winona has counted every tile in Ava's kitchen. She knows every scratch in the linoleum and the rings on the kitchen table.

More than anything she's been aware of the window and how that inky rectangle has slowly, inexorably, given way to a pale steely light. There is no way to hold back the night and she isn't sure if she welcomes or fears the dawn.

Her senses seemed dulled, everything coming at her through a haze of white noise and delayed reactions but when she hears the crunch on the gravel and the low throb of an engine she is alert, awake, and she pushes herself up from the table and reaches for her purse, for the gun, with an unthinking automation that shocks her later on.

Ava has the sawed-off and is heading for the front door, barely pausing to glance back at Winona and there's an unspoken agreement that Winona stays a little behind her. Ava moves the curtain back from the parlour window with the mouth of the shotgun.

"Who is it?" Her mouth is so dry the words stick and the voice that comes out doesn't quite sound like hers.

"It's Boyd's truck," Ava responds and moves to the front door and the sawed-off is still set high in her hands, her grip on it strong. She opens the front door, Winona behind her.

She stands on the porch and stares at the unfamiliar truck, its mud-splattered windshield obscuring whoever is in there, waits for something happen. And then a door opens and a long figure unfolds itself and she sees his hat and feels herself slump against the doorframe. Ava is already running, has almost reached the truck before Winona notices the other man pulling himself out of the passenger-side. He catches her and stumbles slightly and they hold each other.

And she looks away from them and watches Raylan start to walk towards the house, across the patch of earth that separates them. He moves with a deep-seated weariness, something dragging through his bones, but he is walking back to her. He mounts the steps with a slow tread, takes off his hat, looks at her.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

She puts her arms around his neck and promises herself that she will not cry against his shoulder. "I am now," she says.

One arm goes around her, pulling her close, but he holds his right arm against his side. His lips brush the top of her head.

The steps creak and she looks up to see Ava mounting them carefully, one arm supporting Boyd, who leans heavily on the railing. Ava's eyes are on him, on the leg he favors, but he meets Winona's gaze with a flash of a smile and a nod. She takes it as thanks, and returns the smile. Raylan's eyes follow the other couple into the house.

"What happened up there?" Winona looks up at him, her face urgent, eyes searching. He comes back to her slowly and a shiver runs through him.

"It's over," he tells her.

"That man, Dickie Bennett-"

"He's dead."

She watches him, one hand curling around the lapels of his jacket, the fibers pulled taut under her grasp. "What happened?"

"He's dead," he repeats, and he sees the shadows gather in her eyes.

They go into the house.

Ava has got Boyd as far as the nearest sofa and he sits against it, head resting on the back and Ava perches on the edge of the low table, his hands between hers. He lifts his head when Winona and Raylan enter and says, "You should get that arm seen to."

"Like I said," Raylan says, slow, "I'm fine."

"Are you hurt?" Winona looks up at him, stands away, scrutinizing him.

"He took a bullet," Boyd says.

"Oh my God!" Ava grips Boyd's hands harder.

"I did not."

"You got shot?"

He looks at Winona earnestly and the shadows have turned stormy. "It's a graze."

"A graze..." Her teeth grind together.

"I've had worse."

"Oh, well, that makes it okay. Just what in God's name happened up there?"

"I'll get the first aid box," Ava says and slips past them.

Raylan sends an accusing glare over the top of Winona's head but Boyd's eyes are closed and his head is back against the sofa. He looks as though he has about as much fight in him as a pile of sticks and Raylan can't quite bring himself to kick him.

He thinks instead about his parched throat that feels like it's lined with razor blades and when he tells Winona this her chin lifts and she takes him through to the kitchen and tells him to sit in a way the he can't argue with and fills a glass with water from the tap.

She seems at home. Granted, it's been twenty-four hours but it's _only been twenty-four hours._ When he'd seen her standing on the porch of this Harlan house, her hair touched by the early light of a mountain morning, she had looked like she belonged there. She moves around Ava's house with more assurance than he ever felt there and he wonders how it's possible that Winona - the city girl, the sophisticate - should seem like this place that he can never escape from is part of her.

He drinks the water and watches her and decides that for as long as he's known her, now he knows her the best.

Ava returns with the first aid kit, which is more of a box filled with bandages and other useful supplies, and he sits on a kitchen stool pulled close to the sink and slips off his shirt. Winona grimaces as she unwraps Boyd's makeshift bandage. The dried blood does not give easily, and the wound is seeping again when she's done.

She examines the gash. "It's pretty deep. You should probably have stitches."

"It'll heal."

"Another scar." She remarks. He follows her gaze down his torso to the still pink ridge under his ribs just above the waistband of his jeans. She makes an exasperated sound and reaches into the first aid kit, coming up with a brown bottle. Holding his arm over the sink she pours a generous amount of the liquid over the open wound. It sizzles and bubbles obediently. She rubs at the edges of the gash to loosen what might be dirt or more dried blood and repeats the dousing.

He grits his teeth hard against Winona's un-tender mercies and his gaze drifts across, through the door where he can just make out Boyd and Ava on the sofa.

Her head on his shoulder and his arms around her so tight it's hard to distinguish one body from the other. And they are so still, not speaking, not moving, like they've been set in stone. Portrait Of The Lovers Reunited, he thinks, and winces as Winona slaps a dressing into place. He turns his eyes back to her and she glances momentarily at where he had been looking.

"Don't worry," she says, sour, "he'll be getting it in the neck good and plenty later on."

Words rise to his lips but don't pass them. Winona's eyes are as hard and as bright as turquoise and if he pushes too far she'll break. He slips his free hand into hers, feeling the play of muscle and delicate bone beneath the skin. Her lips thin and she releases a long breath down her nose.

"Raylan..." She looks at him, eyes taking in the lines of his face, and she shakes her head.

"It's never easy with us, one way or the other," he reminds her.

A beat, then soft, "I know."

The moment lingers and he senses a crack in Winona's defenses. He gives a tug on her hand and she settles against him in a shudder of breath and all the tension goes out of her. He kisses her forehead and moves a hand to the swell of her belly. Warm. Solid. Evidence of the connection between them.

"Here." She says, moving his hand to the side. Covering it with her own she pushes gently and there's a soft, almost undetectable movement in response. "Can you feel?" She smiles at him. "He just started doing that."

He tries to imagine the dark watery world inside and wonders at something coming out of nothing. He speaks in a whisper, only for her to hear. "I'll tell you later, when we're out of this place. When we're alone."

She lifts her head, studies him. "Everything? Not just what you think I can handle? Because I can handle a lot, Raylan. More than you think." Her eyes are steady, strong, she doesn't flinch.

He nods. "All of it. I promise."

Her lips brush his and they stay together, her hair falling softly against his face, until there is a sound from the doorway and Ava looks in, apologetic.

"Sorry, I- I figured everyone could stand some breakfast."

"We should probably get going," Raylan says, sliding off the stool and trying not to wince as he pulls his shirt back on.

"You're in no state to be going anywhere right now," Ava says, firm. "And even if you don't need to eat, the rest of us do. Right?" She looks at Winona and there's an emphatic nod in response. Both women clear-eyed, strong and immovable.

And he has plenty of questions of his own but thinks that he'll probably get far fewer answers out of Winona than she will out of him.

"Go sit down." Winona gives him a prod.

He retreats, drifts into the room where Boyd still sits with his eyes closed.

"I take it that they are brooking no argument," Boyd says.

Raylan shoots him a look and detects a vague twitch at the corners of his mouth. "I take it you were listening to all of that."

"I cannot help hearing things that are said out loud."

Raylan stands, fidgets. One hand reaches for his cellphone, then he remembers its dismemberment and grimaces. "I need to use your phone."

"Oh?"

"I should call Art, let them know what's happened."

"I was not aware that the purview of the Lexington Marshal's Office extended to such matters as these. I would have thought that the Harlan Sheriff's Department would be the people to inform."

He takes a moment and studies Boyd's bland, disingenuous face. The eyes are open now and watch him placidly. And he feels the ripple across his neck-hair. "Sheriff, huh?" he says slowly.

"Why yes, Raylan, I understand that that is the procedure."

Another moment. "You should know."

"I will call them. After breakfast." Boyd pushes himself up from the sofa, his face contorting when he puts his weight on the sprain. "If you will excuse me, I cannot sully Ava's table in my current state."

He keeps his eyes on Boyd, watches as the slow, limping figure crosses paths with Winona and the pair exchange a few words spoken too low for Raylan to make out.

When Winona enters she smiles at him, bright. "Everything okay?"

"Peachy," he says.

She pulls dishes out of the sideboard. "Well, you just stay there and try to keep out of trouble, Cowboy."

"I don't go looking for trouble," he protests.

Winona rolls her eyes. "Raylan, we both know that isn't true." And out again. And the last thing he hears before he nods off is her laughter mingling with Ava's drifting out from the kitchen.


	11. Epilogue

The landscape is still saturated with rain, its edges blurred and softened. Clouds gather low over the mountains, signalling another storm.

Ava's truck is a less comfortable ride than the town-car but it handles the rough roads a lot better. Here he is, leaving Harlan again and already thinking about the next time he'll have to go back - to return Ava's truck, to retrieve his car.

He wonders if it's worth the resistance, the fight; and he wonders, sometimes, just what it is he's fighting.

He thinks about the night on the mountain, all the things that were said during those dark hours.

"Hey," Winona touches his arm, "you okay?"

"I'm fine." Her features are heavy with the need for sleep and part of the time her eyes have been closed - _just resting them_ , she says, when she jerks awake - and she blinks at him slowly. Her hands are folded protectively over the swell of their unborn.

"I, uh-" He grips the wheel a little tighter. "Is it okay if we stop off before heading back to Lexington?"

"Stop off here in Harlan?"

"Yes."

Her eyes wander over his face. "That's fine." She settles back in her seat.

Something that Boyd had said when they all had sat down to breakfast comes back to him. Said in lieu of grace, perhaps, and he's pretty certain that it's one of Boyd's beloved quotes but he likes it even so. And when he glances sideways at Winona, head cushioned against her hand and her breathing deep and regular, he thinks it fitting: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.


End file.
